Own your productivity

I have written many articles and run master classes about how to own your Time. This includes tools about dealing with procrastination, multi-tasking (which is actually a bad thing), anxiety and spiralling thoughts, planning, prioritising – this is just a few from my toolkit. I am a huge believer in the mantra ‘Tiny tweaks lead to huge change’ (this was made popular in Amy Cuddy’s Ted talk). For example, going to sleep thirty minutes earlier enables you to wake up thirty minutes earlier and this provides a valuable block of time to take action on something important to you. Perhaps it is starting a meditation practice, exercise, reading or carving out a studying slot.  Just 20 minutes of exercise at least 3 times a week will make a huge shift both mentally and physically. Replacing fizzy drinks for water will impact your health in tremendous ways. If you want to make a significant shift to your productivity habits in 2020, I have the simple tweak that will yield massive results. Ready…pick up your phone less. And if you don’t believe me – here’s an exercise to prove it. Go to your Settings on your phone and then click on Screen Time. I am quite sure you will be astounded how much time you actually spent on your phone today. And if you are reading this early morning – it doesn’t count! Check again at the end of your day before bed and be prepared to be astonished. This huge realisation became very apparent to me when I was on holiday earlier in November. I was away with my husband for 8 days to celebrate our wedding anniversary – this is sans kids so we really had the opportunity for huge downtime. At the end of the trip, a message appeared on my phone – ‘Your screen time was down 50% last week, for an average of 2 hours, 4 minutes a day’. Wow – that meant my normal screen time was 4 hours! And all I was doing on holiday was checking occasional mails in the day, WhatsApp to stay in touch with the family at home, checking the socials when I had some waiting time and listening to podcasts. Please check to see your actual screen time to have an accurate awareness of where your time is going, most of us tend to under estimate the amount of time we spend on it daily. You can justify it and say ‘well, I need to check mails all day or I need to make calls’. I’m pretty sure most of that time is due to constant checking in with the social platforms, recurring email checking every 10 minutes and responding to every beep and ping from your WhatsApp. There is nothing wrong with using these tools but it is costing you your focus, attention and energy. We are self-interrupters with this ridiculous need to check mails constantly. If something is so urgent, someone will call you. I know you are thinking ‘But what if I miss an important request?’ If you check your mails every few hours – yes hours – you will become more productive and not nothing is that life changing you won’t receive a call about it. Another tweak related to checking the phone less is when you sit down to start on  a task in the morning, perhaps a quotation, proposal, presentation, strategy work, do it first BEFORE you check your inbox. This tweak is so powerful because if you check your inbox first, you get flooded with several new requests. And these aren’t your priorities – they are everyone else’s! This takes you from a calm state with one focus point straight to overwhelm, not knowing where to begin and most likely results in procrastination and then nothing really productive emerges out of your session.So focus on the task for 90 minutes and then take a break and check in. A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.” This is from the book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Like any new habit, you need to bring an awareness to how often you pick up your phone. And then ask yourself – is this worth the distraction from my work that is aligned to my goals? I know it’s tempting to reach for the device when WhatsApp interrupts you to let you know someone else wants your attention. Right in that second! But the truth is if you give away your precious time, you lose out on the opportunity to make progress on your goals and ultimately to create the life you want. If you respond half an hour later when you are ready to respond, I assure you nothing will change. Take your power back and let your phone be a strategic tool, not a saboteur and the reason you complain ‘I just don’t have enough time in the day’. Here’s to tiny tweaks,Warm wishesLori