How To Actually Get Your Work Done

List of steps to follow

1. Set Goals
2. Break them down
3. Create time blocks
4. Plan your day
5. Get Started
6. Stay focused
7. Make it feel good
8. Recharge energy
9. Reflect appropriately
10. Conclusion

1. Set Goals

This basically involves where you actually want to go and what’s your destination your are aiming for. If you have a fixed destination in mind, it makes it easier to reach your goals. By doing this, it makes easier for us to understand what’s more important to us. The way I synthesize these thing is in three different steps :-

• Think about the long term
• Think about the medium term
• Think about the short term

In long term, you have to think about how people will remember you.

In medium term, we are thinking three to five years out. Where should I be in three to five years.

In short term, you are thinking about what are my goals for the year. It could be about celebrating your consistency in gym for the last twelve months.

So you should ask yourself these question, “Am I clear on my goals?” and “What am I actually working towards?“. If you don’t have an idea about that than write down your thoughts in a book for few days and you will see what you are really interested in, It will make you clear on that.

2. Break them down

Just by setting your goals doesn’t help you make progress towards it. It is better than having nothing but there are way more steps involved to achieve your goals. In this step, we break down larger chunks into smaller chunks. So I ask this question to myself, “What input do I need to do on a weekly basis that will get me closer towards a goal?“.

For example, for health the goal is to build muscle (you can turn that into smaller chunks like focusing on different muscles like bicep, tricep etc), then the weekly input will be daily weight training with progressive overload.

Just to simplify all of this down

What are the things we need to do every week to make progress towards this goal

3. Create time blocks

Essentially here the idea is to make the time for these weekly inputs on our calendar. You can use this method called Ideal Week. You create a new calendar, call it your ideal week and create calendar events like when you are going to wakeup, when you are going to bed, what time your are having lunch, what time you are doing work, what time you are hanging out with friends and family. It adds a clearity in your life.

4. Plan your day

Setting your intentions as your first day in the morning

So before starting your day, you should have clearity of what you are suppose to do that day. One of the most important productivity tip is called the Daily Highlight. The idea is every single day ask yourself a question, “What is the most important task I have to do today” and make time for that task in your calendar. If you not do that task than your entire day was wasted. If you continue to do that for 365 days, you make so much progress by the end of the year.

5. Get started

So, you have planned your day that you are going to study for your english exams from 10am to 1pm. So the clock hits 10am, you have a choice to either follow your time table and study or you would not study and procastinate to avoid doing that thing that your past self has planned for you. This is something even I struggle with. This is where motivation and discipline comes in. A motivated person will do his job regardless of any excuses. Once you get started with the task it is easier to continue doing it.

6. Stay focused

Now at this point the key thing to level up your productivity is to stay focused on doing that one thing you are supposed to do at that time. Apparently, an average worker wastes 40% of their day in terms of efficiency because they are trying to task switch and getting distracted. Over the course of 10 years that is 3 years of wasted time. Over the course of 40 years that is 10 years of wasted time. That’s just an insane amount of time to waste. So get good at focusing on one thing that involves keeping your phone away from study table. It might involve turning off notifications on your phone when you’re studying. Deep Work by Cal Newport is an entire book focused on improving your focus. If you know this is the step I struggle the most, you should read this book.

7. Make it feel good

The secret of productivity is not discipline, it is joy. If we feel good we are automatically motivated to do certain task.

So the idea is to recognize what makes me feel good while doing my work. It involves me to play some motivational background music while studying or whatever works for you.

8. Recharge your energy

Now, you have done all of this stuff but now the main thing you wanna do is to take appropriate breaks so you don’t burn yourself out. This involves conserving your energy in the work day and recharging your energy in the end of the day. It could be like taking small breaks during studying and walking around your house or doing some stretching or whatever to recharge your energy. Productivity is to an extent about time management like you have to create these containers of time, if you don’t then you know time is a finite resource. Even though, time is a finite resource, energy is a renewable resources.

We can renew are energy throughout the workday and at the end of the workday we can by doing things that are appropriately recharging. Now, make a list what recharges your energy and what drains your energy. For me, walking, light exercise and listening to music recharges my energy on the other hand scrolling through social media, watching youtube videos drained my energy. If you are completely drained then going for a walk would be the last thing you would do but counterintuitively going for a walk is actually going to generate way more energy then just fidgeting with your phone on the sofa.

There is another really great way to recharge your energy and that involves learning new things and learning new things for me I found out is an incredible way of generating more energy and also it expands my knowledge.

9. Reflect appropriately

This might involve doing something like a daily reflection just like, “How did my day go? Did I do my daily highlight?“. It might involve something like a weekly review just like, “What were the top wins last week? What were my challenges? What were my biggest learning points? What are the top three biggest things I want to get done next week?“. It might also involve something like a quaterly review just like analysing the goals every three months and asking if they are still worth pursuing.

They are more few optional extras you can do on top of that, you can learn to type faster (this is sort of the philosophy of efficiency), use keyboard shortcuts. You can use funkier apps that make your life 1% more efficient for you to do something. Secondly, you can add systems to leverage, you can add A.I. tools to boost your productivity by using system to leveraging your own inputs. Next, you can capture open loops by capturing open loops in our mind in a task management system of some sort and then clarifying those tasks and organizing them and then actually doing them.

10. Conclusion

These are all really good things of productivity but I feel like these were the add-ons to the main thing and the main thing is basically to figure out where you want to go, make time for those things, sit down and actually do those things, do it consistently for a long time and reflect appropriately like how you’re getting there and whether you are going in the right direction or not.