A friend of mine complained to us in the group text we have about working over the weekend instead of spending time with her family. I gave her the below advice and it worked so well with her that it might work well with you.
To avoid the temptation of procrastination, reschedule all your project meetings from the first work day of the week to mid-week or to the morning of the last work day of the week. This will give you enough time to work on the updates you need to share in those meetings, and also be able to close off the week, prepare for the next work week and disengage from work time into family time.
I hope this advice would help you too.
Thank you Seth for reminding us: Happy day 100 of 2021!
I seek to improve the degree of clarity in my communications because no one likes to feel confused when they read or listen to something shared with them. Clarity in communication will serve me well in my relationships and also in my work like my podcast and future courses. It is a skill, like any other, that takes practice and requires asking for feedback and implementing small tweaks to improve it.
Two great questions I learned from Seth Godin are:
What is it for? Who is it for?
I can use these questions as filters before writing and sharing an email, a group text or an Instagram caption.
When we ask these questions we will be able to create a clear message that meets the purpose we want to accomplish. I sometimes cancel the whole idea of sending a message when I see that I am only interrupting someone’s day with it and not sharing or adding something valuable.
I invite you to try these questions too. They work super well when designing products and work presentations.
I’ve made so much progress in my relationship to things in the 7-week lockdown in 2020. I totally fell in love again with my house after spending so much time making room for air and light to enter and throwing things I have not touched for years. I learned it’s a process and not a one-time project from the book Decluttering At The Speed of Life which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to improve their relationship to possessions. I’m so proud that my dresser is still organized the same way I did it one year ago. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my clothes and kids’ bedrooms, though. We as family still need to make decluttering a continuous habit because we really felt the positive impact of finding our belongings easily and enjoying what we own.
Last week, I was asked to clear out my office desk (apart from my desktop, mouse, keyboard, phone set and desk plant) as it needed to be sterilized by a special team while we worked from home for a few days because sadly COVID-19 is at its peak in my country Jordan these days. I obliged and took what I wanted back home while keeping most of my desk usable/decorative items in the office’s closet.
When I get stuck on a task I don’t enjoy or did not do before or that has a lot of ambiguity, I feel I need to muster my strength and power through it using the practices I learned and proved to work before; like research, analysis, using timers for deep work sessions. I think to myself get focused and get it done. I noticed I never pray for guidance and feeling ease because my work task is so earthly and Divine guidance is not part of the equation for me. Not only that, but I had a limiting belief that this is not where we use spiritual practices, and that we should only use them in relationships and managing emotions.
During working hours I try to keep my focus and track my deep work sessions using the below tools;
Keep a daily tally of 30-minute focus sessions using pen and paper according to Cal Newport’s’ advice. My personal minimum target is a total of 90 minutes per day.
Use Forest app to keep me from touching my phone for any reason while also growing trees as a proof of my focus. I highly recommend this app.
Turn on Do Not Disturb Mode on my phone.
Turn off Bluetooth so my smart watch won’t buzz.
Use noise cancellation headset.
Play music with no lyrics, just instrumental music.
The below are other tools I use that I pay some premium for , but totally worth it:
I learned this concept from the book Start Finishing. The author noticed how it takes us so long to jump back in a project when we leave it for a while, for example for the weekend or when we need to pause it for some reason. Instead, he recommends writing the exact steps you need to follow next time you start working on this project:
Here are some ways to leave yourself bread crumbs:
At the end of a work session — which may be the end of one focus block or the end of the last of back-to-back focus blocks — leave a quick note to yourself about where to pick up.
If you were truly in flow and lost track of time, your fallback time to leave yourself bread crumbs is at the end of the day. While it’s not as optimal as at the end of the working session, it’s better than starting cold the next morning or at your first focus block of the day.
Consider using author Ernest Hemingway’s trick of stopping before you’re empty and leaving something easy to start with. You want it to be easy enough that it doesn’t take a lot of brainpower but difficult enough that you have to engage with it.
I try to write bread crumbs every time I quit working on an excel sheet, either for a break, or due to some kind of interruption, and definitely as part of my workday shutdown ritual.
Today I wrote my work goals for the year on a white cardboard paper to keep them on my desk visible to me all the time like |I did last year.
I spent the first 6 weeks of the year analyzing and reporting last year’s performance and preparing for a kick off meeting presenting all my findings. Now that this task is done I’m back to working on my objectives for the year. Seeing them written in front of me reminds me of my priorities and keeps me focused.
Time blocking at work has been an indispensable productivity and focus technique for me in the past months. I learned it from Cal Newport and Charlie Gilkey.
At the start of each workday I write what I plan to do on a time schedule. I use my weekly passion planner to do that and I use erasable pens as I edit it when needed.
For my workday shutdown routine I follow the 15-minute checkout steps as exactly mentioned in the book Start Finishing:
“The checkout is critical because we usually have a better perspective at the end of the day than at the beginning of the day. We know what we did and didn’t do, and we have a good idea of the next steps we need to take to keep the ball rolling. So while our level of overwhelm might be higher, we don’t suffer the mental cobwebs that cloud the beginning of the day.”
Charlie Gilkey-Start Finishing
The 15-minute checkout has three questions:
What did you accomplish? (Celebrate!) Acknowledge what you did rather than just focusing on what you didn’t do. Always, always, always celebrate what you accomplished. Life is but a series of small steps, and if you don’t celebrate the small wins, it’s harder to build up the momentum for the bigger ones.
Is there anything that you need to do right now to be able to disengage? This question answers that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten to do something. Check your inbox and your to-do list for those things that have to happen today. Ask yourself what would really happen if you didn’t do whatever you’re considering — you would be surprised how many things can wait until the next day.
When do you need to do the things that you didn’t get done today? There might be a lot of things that came up during the day that need to get done sometime soon, but they don’t have to happen today. If something needs to happen tomorrow or some specific day in the future, put it in whatever app, tool, planner, or calendar you use so that you’ll see it tomorrow. That way your mind can let it go and you can get some peace.
Write your daily big 3 tasks for tomorrow. These are the tasks that will move my key projects and goals forward. Writing them will help me start next day with clarity.
I also love what Cal Newport says when he is done with workday shutdown ritual:
Finally — and I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this — I close down my computer and say the magic phrase: “schedule shutdown, complete.”
Cal Newport
What about you, did any of these steps appeal to you? I highly recommend you consider some ritual to announce you’re done with work and not take its worries with you back home.
Listen to the podcast episode about this in Arabic:
My ideal workday startup ritual consists of the following steps:
Arrive to office.
Fill up my water bottle.
Light up my office candle (stays on for an hour).
Read for 5 minutes from a work related book (finished reading “To sell is human” like this, currently reading “The motivation manifesto”).
Scan my annual and quarterly work goals and weekly tasks sheet.
Do the 10-minute check-in as mentioned in the amazing book Start Finishing by answering:
Has anything significant changed between now and the last checkout? The key word here is significant. Some events do change the course of your day. For instance, your kids might get sick and you’ll need to change your plans to be able to take care of them.
What did you plan for today? This is where you review the plan you made for yourself the day before.
What’s one thing you’re going to start on right now? This step is all about setting the intention to focus on this one thing for your next time block.
Time block my day using my passion planner. I learned this productivity method from Deep Work book, and I believe this is a very important step to keep me focused during the day and mindful of shifts in my schedule and outside interruptions and self-initiated distractions.