1: How do we maximize our productivity?
That’s the question Laura Mae Martin is tasked with at Google. Her job title? Google productivity expert.
At the core of Laura teaching is the idea of the List Funnel, “something I’ve taught successfully at Google for years,” she writes in her book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.
We “can think of to-do lists like a funnel,” Laura notes. “Start with the highest level of everything we could possibly do, or want to do, and narrow it down into what we actually will do hour by hour, based on time, energy, and priorities.”
She explains we can use part of the List Funnel or all of it. We “move as far down the List Funnel as we feel we need to, based on our role, level, or responsibilities,” she notes, “but it is an end-to-end system for keeping track of all our to-do’s.”
Laura prefers to create her lists with pen and paper, but a digital list can work great, too. “The most important thing is that they all exist and interact,” she suggests.
Last week, we looked at the first piece of this puzzle: Our Main List. To create this first list, we scan our brains for everything we have going on–both personal and professional: “Remember,” she writes, “there is no work you’ and ‘personal you.’ That’s why the Main List encompasses both types of to-do’s. One brain, one list.”
We’ll review our Main List weekly, cross off completed items each time.
2: Next up? The Weekly List.
We select actions off the Main List to focus on in the week ahead and then assign specific days to each task.
“At the beginning of each week (make it a Sunday night or Monday morning tradition) we take a look at our Main List and from it make a Weekly List.”
Why not just work from the Main List?
“It’s too distracting to work from only our Main List,” Laura notes, “because we’re using energy points to look at things we have no intention of doing that week.”
We begin by identifying our top three priorities for the week. “The first step for productivity is defining clearly what we want or need to do,” Laura writes. “I don’t often refer to goals because they feel like far-off, long-range, ‘hopefully someday’ activities. Instead I use priorities because it indicates present intention, focus, and fluidity.”
“When asked about the biggest obstacle to productivity,” Laura reflects, “the one I mention most often is having a list of things we want to do, but no plan for when we actually will do them.”
So we write down our top three priorities and when we will do them.
If we are traveling or have a long list of meetings in a given week, we accept that there are a number of items from our Main List that will not be part of this week’s plan. According to Laura, “One component of peak productivity is having a good inventory of everything we’re not doing yet. That is equally as important as everything we are doing.”
She shares the story of one executive she worked with who “complained of having a never-ending to-do list with items that just kept carrying over.”
Laura recommended that she bring her to-do list to their first coaching session along with a print-out of her calendar.
“We sat down and went through each item of her list and I said, ‘Okay, looks like you want to get this done, when do you plan to do it?'”
The executive replied, “Well, I’m not sure because I have meetings all day and no time here or there, so … maybe at night?”
Not an ideal answer. In time, that approach leads to burnout.
Instead, “we have to consider our to-do items as part of our weekly schedule and block time for them just as we do for meetings,” Laura recommends.
When we look at our calendar, if we don’t see blocks to complete our to-dos, we “either need to 1) be realistic about what we can accomplish, given our travel/meeting schedule, or 2) start making room on our calendar for these items.”
What else goes on our Weekly list? Action items from meetings we attend that must be finished in the current week.
What else? “The Weekly List also has a spot to track habits we’re trying to build, like meditation or exercise,” Laura notes.
Once we’ve set our Weekly List, it creates accountability. By paying close attention to our Weekly List, we can avoid being surprised at the end of the week if we haven’t finished our intended tasks.
3: Laura also recommends we consider creating themes for different parts of our week.
“Friday early evening, I run errands,” she shares. “Wednesday night, I do personal tasks on my computer. Tuesday evening I don’t touch my computer and just do physical things around my house. Sunday night I shop online for anything I need. This helps ensure that each area of my Main List gets addressed at least once a week.”
One example? If one of our responsibilities is to cook dinner each night, we can create themes, “like meatless Monday, Italian food Tuesday, new recipe Wednesday, soup night Thursday, etc.,” Laura writes.
“Themes make planning and executing dinner much easier, ensure we’re trying out new recipes frequently, and prevent us from eating Italian food three nights in a row (which actually might not be such a bad thing).”
We can use a similar approach at work. We can “make Thursday ‘Administrative tasks and expenses day’ and Friday ‘Client follow-up,’ Laura writes. “The themes should mostly stay consistent week over week when we make our Weekly List, so they become patterns.
“We can build your themes based on things already going on that day—if we hold the staff meeting for our team on Mondays, maybe that day’s theme is “People Management” and we also schedule our individual meetings with reports later that day.”
One other benefit to creating themes? “When we have unexpected free time on a certain day,” she notes, “we can instantly refer to our theme and know what to work on.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I intentionally narrowing my focus each week by setting clear priorities, or am I letting my to-do list overwhelm me?
Action: Choose my top three priorities at the start of the week, block time for them on my calendar, and experiment with creating themes for different days to simplify planning.
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