1: The goal? To be more productive and less stressed.
Google productivity expert Laura Mae Martin believes there is one simple thing we must do.
Make a list of every open loop we currently have in our brains.
Personal. Professional. Projects. Deadlines. Ideas. To-Dos of all types and flavors.
“If we do only one thing from this entire chapter, it should be this,” Laura writes in her book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.
She calls this “The Main List.” Creating one will “make the biggest difference in pushing our productivity forward,” she notes.
We can think of our Main List as a “one-time brain dump,” she observes. “We’ll talk more later [next week’s RiseWithDrew] about how new things make their way onto this list (like to-do’s from emails and meeting action items) and how it evolves.”
Should we write it down or create a digital version?
Doesn’t matter, she says. One tip she suggests if we make a physical version is to “make it a habit to immediately take a picture of it so if we lose the piece of pater, not all is lost!”
2: Laura recommends we consider creating categories of activities according to the specific types of energy/action required.
“These are the six standard categories I use,” she writes, “but we can use our own—anything that can be grouped together for the same type of action.”
Here’s the list of Laura’s six categories: [Note: Click here for a complete list of Laura’s lists.]
- Work – Computer
- Personal – Computer
- Personal – Calls
- Personal – Physical
- Personal – To Buy
- Personal – Errands
“My example here,” she writes, “separates work tasks from personal ones, and then organizes them by the type of action necessary to accomplish them.
“By breaking it up this way,” Laura notes, “it helps us have an easy place to go when, for instance, we have a long flight during which we can use our computer but can’t make phone calls.
“Or for when we know we’re doing things around the house and we won’t be on our computer.
Or we’re already out running errands and find ourselves with extra time before school pickup.”
Laura shares that most of her work is done on her computer. We can create additional work categories, however, to separate the different types of work actions we do. She suggests we keep it simple, though, and limit ourselves to three or fewer categories.
“For example,” she writes, “as a transactional lawyer, we might have Contract Drafting and Negotiation Prep, two different types of energies.
“As a photographer we might have Client Responses and Editing. The goal is not to have a subsection for every project; the goal is to group by similar type of work.”
We can use Laura’s categories to stimulate our thinking and capture all the noise in our brains, and then customize or trade out categories as needed.
3: We’re not done yet, however. Because prioritizing is not reordering.
“When most people have a huge list of things to do,” Laura observes, “they think of prioritizing as putting the items or tasks in a specific order to figure out a way to get them all done, starting with the most important and finishing with the least.”
There’s a better way.
Prioritizing is also about “figuring out what to knock off the bottom of those lists,” she suggests, “and how to say no to those things that don’t deserve a spot on our lists or our calendar at all.”
Why? Because “saying no to good things leaves room for saying yes to great things (and having time to do them well).”
Once Laura has her Main List, she then targets the bottom third of tasks with the lowest priority.
“Those are usually the things that have been in my brain to do for a while and keep getting carried over,” she notes.
Then, she asks herself for each task: “What is the worst thing that would happen if I never do this? Is there any other way for this to get done without my doing it? Is there any way for me to half-do this and move on from it?”
The right mindset? “Say no to everything, except the things we say yes to,” says Laura.
More tomorrow!
__________________________
Reflection: Have I given myself the space to capture every open loop on a single Main List—and am I brave enough to let go of tasks that no longer serve my highest priorities?
Action: Create my Main List today, sort tasks by energy or action required, and intentionally remove or delegate items at the bottom that don’t truly deserve my time.
What did you think of this post?
