Whatever you are doing right now, step out of it, sit down and read this… You will need it!

After a long time researching personal and corporate productivity, on what would be the right process to make things right, what are the tools and the tips to have a both effective & efficient use of time and resources to accomplish your tasks, I have came down to a small and easy advice on how to do it… You can read more details about it in this Post  but here’s a small recap:

Once you have a To Do List, assign properties to the same line item, and normally it’s like adding 4 Tags to the line item:

• Call Jack: Project A, 15 Minutes, End of Day Today, Phone
• Get Shampoo: Personal, 1 Hour, Friday 13th, Errands
• Reply to Amy: Project B, 30 Minutes, Tuesday 22nd, Email
• *To Do Description*: *Related to which project*, *Time to finish*, *Priority/Deadline*, *Context*

So here’s the trick, You just need to assign 4 different tags to your list, and based on that you can re-order the list, and make sure you can finish them all on time… So per example, if you’re leaving work at 6 PM, you might not be able to take that call because it’s not business hours anymore and is inappropriate to do it, however if you were heading to lunch or a meeting, and you’re driving your car, then you can take advantage of those 30 minutes to take that call. and so on.

I guarantee you, that if you use this method, you will increase your productivity tremendously!

So what’s this week’s tip all about?

Let’s say you were given a report to make, the person giving it to you, expect it done in 2 hours, or let’s say the next day… Or Let’s say you agreed to execute a project that normally takes 2 days to finish… But you end up, slipping through time, procrastinating.. leaving some details to the last minute… and so on… What happened? why are you not working efficiently? if an Email takes 10 minutes to reply, why is it not done yet?

I will tell you… Simply because you don’t know how to do it… (at that particular time)… YES… Sometimes, the reply to an email when it comes to TYPING… takes 10 minutes, but to know WHAT TO TYPE… might take 5 minutes to 5 hours… 🙂 got it?

So most of the times, we tend to ignore one important step, which is “Accommodating needed time to Learn How to Do the task”, but since we don’t pay attention on how this is too important, or our Super Ego jumps in (I’m going a little Freud on this 🙂 ), we tend to accept the task, commit to deadlines, and then Frustrate our entire life, and our personal time, and our energy trying to live up to that expectation.

So the Answer is simple, put a step first, call it: The little Learner! how much time I need to Learn how to do this task? (even if it’s 10 Seconds)

If you need help, it’s OK! just ask for help, or put some checkpoints along the way, so start writing a small draft and then validate it with your boss or client, then go over it again and re-do the validation and so on… You will realize that Not only you learned how to do it, but also the satisfaction from your work grows higher and higher…

So remember, LEARN, to put your Ego aside and Increase your Productivity! 

Enjoy your week,

SC

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project