1wasteAs a productivity reminder to everyone (but mainly myself), I’m re-posting it to hopefully serve as a boost for your motivation and a helpful tip.

As I grabbed my computer this morning to “just check everything,” I had a revelation: what if EVERY time I picked up my laptop or sat down at my desk, I consciously tried to make something happen? Rather than just “check in” with what’s gone on since I last left the interwebz (inevitably not long enough ago that anything dire or severe has changed), what if I made a distinct effort to actually get something done?

Since this is a lifestyle blog–focusing primarily on optimizing your life, how can you apply this to your productivity or motivation? Honestly, there has to be something beneficial and “forward-pushing” that you can do each and every time you sit down at your desk, walk into your office, or start up your computer–something that gets you one step closer to finishing that massive project, or something that gets you closer to landing that major client.

This something could be infinitesimally small–a response to an email–or larger. These “somethings” could be enough to snowball into finally finishing a huge project, or enough to just keep you going until it is done.

Either way, by admitting that you won’t sit down to just check the things you know haven’t really changed (analytics, revenue streams, even emails) unless you get some real work done, you’ll be able to recognize those times when you just want to jump on the computer to waste time and those times when you’re really engaged enough to get something done.

I think that we all have these big things we have to do–either put on us by a boss or some other authority, or by ourselves–you know what I’m talking about: the big things that hang over our heads and cause our productivity to wane, our motivation to be slowly sapped away, and our desire to do nothing more than sit in our boxers and play Halo to grow.

For me, it’s:

  1. Writing for this blog (trying to get to the 3-5 posts per week range)
  2. Writing guest posts for other blogs
  3. Writing my novel (I’m so close to being finished!)
  4. Working on my side business (www.LoopingWorship.com)
  5. Planning, preparing, and dealing with the future of my business(es).
The sixth one (planning) is probably the scariest one, since it’s not really a “tangible” thing–I can plan all day long, but it’s hard to say whether or not that’s a truly “productive” thing to do.
Since most of my “big things” are essentially writing tasks, I would be hard-pressed not to be pretty productive just by simply sitting down and writing something first thing in the morning. Either a chapter of the novel, a couple blog posts, etc., and I’d have completed my overall goal: “make something happen EVERY time I sit down.”
Put this concept into practice right now:
  1. Figure out what you consider productive tasks and what you consider active ones. I don’t really think answering email is more productive than taking a shower. Both need to be done, but they don’t build my business or give me something tangible to work from tomorrow. Of course, sometimes you’ll get that email that needs to be answered in more thorough, inclusive way–in that case, it might rank up there with your productive tasks.
  2. Decide what you’d like to sit down to tomorrow. Do you want to find that fight scene completely scripted, outlined, and near completion? Probably. Do you want to have that blog post you were going to submit to Problogger finished and emailed over? Yeah, you do. Plan tomorrow, then figure out what you need to do today to get there. Remember, today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.
  3. Do it. Or something. Just don’t look too long at the “big picture,” or scope creep, motivation monotony, or something worse will befall you. Do something productive, then take a break. When you come back, do something again (it’s about doing something every time you sit down, remember?).
Any thoughts? I’ve been using this approach to productivity on and off for awhile, and I wanted to revisit the concept in my own life again, so I thought it might (again) be helpful to you as well.