I start my day with the best of intentions. I know what matters to my bottom line, what I need to delegate, and what I want to accomplish. I’m locked, loaded and ready to go!
I march into my office eager to get started on all my predefined and important work and then…A fuzzy haze washes over me. I find myself staring with unfocused eyes at my computer screen and all that focus has just flown out the window. What happened?!
Even though I know what I need to do – my to do list is evidence of this – I often suffer from some sort of productivity paralysis. It’s a fantastic disappointment to me to look back on my day/week and see what I have not done. Things that should have been reasonably completed within the hours I allot to work.
There’s a deeper significance to my lack of productivity. Time I could be spending with my family and friends is instead filled with make-up work. Being productive in my work is a passion I’m cultivating. I simply don’t want to be defined by the amount of work I do. I’d rather be defined as someone who chooses the right things to do that make a huge difference to the bottom line.
Via LifeHacker.com I found a great article entitled “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” by Peter Bregman that gives me hope. I’m going to read and re-read this article a few times and try implementing it this week.
Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people’s problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I’d been ambushed. And I know better.
Even though I’ll probably always struggle with scheduling out my work throughout the day it really makes sense. I’m going to work on whipping my planning and resulting work into shape.
Let me know how you plan and stay productive in the comments below.
Full Article by Peter Bregman here. (via LifeHacker )
