Ken made two excellent suggestions:

1) Be aware your own energy cycles so you can schedule your work accordingly. (I wrote an article about this a few years ago.)

2) Include small tasks on your daily to-do list so you can remain productive between larger ones and increase your sense of accomplishment.

Ken is the lucky winner of Rodger’s Magic of Habit course. Congratulations, Ken!

Don’t forget that prizes are available every day this week, so keep on commenting for more chances to win!

Thanks for the great tips. Turning OFF your email is a great solution (just remove the temptation to check it).

Another option is to turn off the feature that checks for new email automatically… then you manually get to choose when you check email, which is what you are essentially doing by turning off your email client

When your job or work environment requires you to be available to “put out fires” whenever they happen, that can certainly complicate things a bit.

In that case, you need to be even MORE ruthless about which projects and tasks get your time and attention. As I’ll mention in a future article, you are never going to be able to get EVERYTHING done… so you really need to focus on the most important things first.

Another idea is to try to find pockets of uninterrupted time… try keeping a log for a few days and see if you can spot any patterns in the chaos. Are early mornings better than mid-morning? Can you focus your first hour or two on your MOST important projects?

The idea is to find a few hours during the day when you can work in a more structured way focusing on your most important projects, and then use a more flexible unstructured approach the rest of the time (knowing that it’s just the nature of your job to have to work this way).

At the same time, you may be able to find ways to proactively reduce some of the interruptions and “fires” that you keep having to deal with.

It’s hard to say without knowing more about your specific situation, but maybe you can have an FAQ page answering common questions, or something like that that deflects or reduces some of the most common interruptions you’re dealing with.

Thanks for the great question!

1. Every day on my list is “15 min Outlook” I set my timer for 15 minutes and just go through what’s in my In Box and my folders. This helps me keep it clean and prevents me from missing things that I might just glance over

2. When I’m not WORKING on my email, I shut it down so that I’m not distracted when the bell rings every time a new email comes in. This helps me stay on task and focused on what I’m doing.

With the tools and methods that Rodger has out forward,
its now or never to put them into practice,

One step at a time, work on a method for a week or a month, until its almost second nature, then tackle the next challenge.

If your anything like me, i love challenges which is why i take on so much, and changing your productivity habits is one of the biggest battles you will face, and the rewards are endless. Imagine more time to do more of those other goals. Spend time with the family, complete that personal project, time to exercise.

Rodgers methods, helps your clear your mind so you can operate better. FOCUS, reduce/eliminate procrastination and identify and clear out the clutter in your daily life.

Start small and build, Rome wasnt built in a day.
Habits dont change overnight, but it will happen, when you have a road map, a plan to move forward in the right direction.

I do a list and prioritize for each day, but herein lies the rub. I am a middle school counselor. Now if you know anything about the twightlight zone of homo sapien development and the happenings of a middle school, you know that crises and drama are the order of the day. Sometimes days can go by and my ever-expanding to-do list gets buried beneath the detritus of drama! I have become somewhat adept at multi-tasking only to be told – there is no such thing and if you try, you really aren’t accomplishing anything. Is there any hope for those of us in the trenches who subject to the vagaries of others’ time?

I have a list of things to do;
I’m trying to keep it to a few.
I use a list ’cause I have a belief:
To write things down is quite a relief!

You may think I’m a crazy, old codger,
But, I’m just doing what I learned from Roger.
When they’re on a list you can organize,
It’s much easier to prioritize.

“How does one do that?”, you may ask….
I pick out my most important task,
I assign to it the number one
I number them all until the list is done.

‘First things first’ are the things that matter,
They’re not handed out on a silver platter;
I won’t waste my week on some idle chatter,
Or be left in the box as the on-deck batter.

I try to do more now in much less time;
Or my life will pass with no reason or rhyme.
If I follow the tips from Mr. Constandze,
I’ll have time left over to go to the Dance!

Marc Barry Greenstein

A couple of ideas… One is to separate projects & tasks, so you have separate lists for each. Your Master Project List gives you an idea of your projects or outcomes that you are working on, and the task list can focus on just the actions you need to take to move them forward.

I personally have a separate Task List for each project, so I know what tasks I need to do when I work on each of my projects.

Then I have a plan at the Project level (using my schedule). If something comes up, you have to move things around as needed, but having a plan helps you decide if the new thing is more important than what you had planned to do.

Another idea is to use a Master Task List to capture all the tasks that you need to do, and a Daily Task list to capture just the tasks you are focusing on today.

HTH

My to-do list is just for daily tasks that I need to accomplish that day!

People try too hard to squeeze too much on their to-do list and then get frustrated when they don’t accomplish ALL of the tasks!

Also, I like to keep some small tasks and incremental project steps on my daily task list, too. These help me maintain momentum between meetings or larger projects, and they “rev me up” with a few quick wins when my energy dips throughout the day.

Looking forward to your guest posts this week.