Tips for Getting things Done: A Guide to Increasing productivity

Today, many people struggle with completing tasks appropriately and promptly. As a result, more people are working longer hours, relying on caffeine to keep going, and often suffering burnout. Did you know you can do more every day without getting overwhelmed? Here are tips getting things done to help you increase productivity.

Create a Daily To-do List

Have a list of your important tasks every day and make it simple. Remember, your tasks do not have to be massive jobs that will take longer to complete. Add every role regardless of its size. Micro tasks help you do more daily while allowing you to achieve bigger goals.

Leverage Timeblocking to Complete more Tasks

The Pomodoro technique is one of the most popular methods when it comes to time blocking. This technique involves blocking everything else and focusing on your tasks for 25 minutes before taking a short break. This method is proven, and many professionals swear by it. Try it and see how much you can achieve when you concentrate on your tasks fully.

Complete the Hardest Tasks First

The best time to complete your hard tasks is when your brain is fresh and relaxed. Many people prefer handling these early in the morning. Getting the difficult tasks out of your way frees you to focus on other things during the day. Working on difficult tasks takes lots of self-discipline and motivation. Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time will help you achieve your goals. The book is available on Amazon.

Clear Your Desk

A clutter-free desk can help you focus on your tasks better. Take some time to clear your workspace every day. Doing so not helps reduce distractions and focus better. File what you need and throw away what you don’t. Find a permanent solution for paper clutter. Remember, even tech geeks often have to deal with paper.

An effective way of dealing with paper clutter is to scan and save them in a paperless filing system. Where possible, create templates to document repetitive tasks such as blog posts, responding to emails, and sending letters.

Concentrate on one Job at a Time

Avoid starting a new project when the old one is still pending. While some people opine that multi-tasking helps them get more things done, the practice is less valuable. Studies reveal that focusing on two tasks at the same time can affect your productivity. Another report indicates that the human mind cannot cope with extensive multitasking.

Create a Gap Time

A gap time is the small sections of time you encounter during the day while commuting to work, waiting for meetings to begin, or standing in a queue. Create a list of small and short tasks that you can complete during these moments. You can opt to read your emails or work on something to get value out of these unused minutes.

Keep Off Social Media

While social media can be crucial in today’s world, it is one of the biggest distractions, with many people using it for the wrong reasons. If you have to use social media, be sure to log out of your personal accounts. Personal social media platforms will take your mind out of the goal.

Getting Things Done: A Beginner’s Guide

Getting Things Done is a popularly used productivity system in the time management industry. It helps users clear their minds to focus on the goal at hand. Here is a detailed overview of the GTD system.

Getting Things Done Overview

The Getting Things Done system focuses on the idea that you have a variety of inputs. Inputs are thoughts that cross your mind, and you must understand how to manage them. These can be meetings you need to attend, a phone number you should remember, or even errands you should run. However, many people hardly do anything about these thoughts once they experience them, and they often ignore them.

Let us take an example. Sometimes you get a missed phone call that you should return but don’t. Often you read an email that needs your action and do nothing about it expecting to remember later.

Many people have experienced these two examples. Failure to note crucial things on a task list or calendar is a recipe for getting stressed and overwhelmed. According to David Allen, this situation is called the Emergency Scan Modality. The objective of the GTD system is to ensure you achieve mind like water. This conceptallows you to respond to varying inputs in your life accordingly. Here are more details about mind like water.

Mind Like Water

Often, you want to seize all your references or tasks into a credible system. You can then handle them on your terms at a later date. David Allen’s book mentions that the human brain processes ideas without storing them. A trustworthy system maintains everything and eliminates the need to keep on remembering everything. With a quality system, your brain can rest and generate new ideas, a natural state which David calls the mind like water.

Multi-Tasking is a Myth

The human brain does not multi-task accordingly. Experts say that attempting to execute two cognitive tasks simultaneously is something that cannot offer value. When you store your meeting schedules, jobs, and projects in your mind, you switch it into multitasking mode.

According to David Allen’s getting things done book, all these responsibilities are open loops. An open loop is an uncompleted responsibility that should linger in your system. If it is in your psyche, it will need attention and energy to monitor and maintain. This mental multi-tasking practice can affect your productivity. The GTD system comes with an easy to follow 5 step procedure, as we shall see below.

Steps to Getting Things Done

The five primary steps to the getting things done methodology are:

Capture

Sometimes an idea will cross your mind when you are too occupied to put it down on paper. In the end, you will forget about it because the brain does not store ideas. The central principle of Getting Things Done is to seize everything and keep it in a credible system. Doing so helps you make proper decisions about how to handle what you captured when you are ready.

David Allen’s GTD concept states that you can only feel good about what you are doing when you understand what you are doing. Failure to seize the things that catch your attention dips you in the “emergency scan modality” state.

Some people are constantly reacting to the fires that come up continually because they forgot what they had to do. This state denies you the chance to concentrate on one thing for a long time. To get things done, you want to seize everything that crosses your mind and store it in an inbox until you are ready to process it.

Leveraging Inboxes

Sometimes you will have various inboxes, and you need to identify them all. Doing so helps you process them routinely while ensuring that nothing goes unattended. Consider combining your inboxes. Todoist is an excellent tool when it comes to consolidating your inboxes, whether you want to follow up on emails, read articles, or take action on messages. Having fewer inboxes to track open loops makes your system easy to maintain.

Clarify

With everything in your inboxes, you can start processing them and making appropriate decisions. GTD uses a user-friendly workflow to guide users through the decision making procedure. This GTD diagram demonstrates how to plan every input and place it in your credible system.

Your Inbox in the Dominant Factor

Clarity is the crucial part of a credible system that helps you disconnect your brain from multi-tasking. An excellent way to achieve this is to clear your inboxes regularly. Failure to process your inboxes exposes you to a backlog.

A crowded inbox is not as fun as a less crowded one would be. Remember, you are more likely to procrastinate on some tasks, something you should avoid. Process your inboxes regularly to evade a backlog and free your system from friction.

Organize

After the identification process, you want to place everything where it belongs. For instance, assuming a task is actionable; you want to put it in the task management system. TickTockLab is an excellent system that you should consider. If the role is not actionable but you may need it later, then place it in a place where you can refer or recall it. Place time-sensitive tasks like appointments and meetings on your calendar. You can eliminate non-important tasks that do not add value to your life.

Understanding Contexts

A context is a thing, tool, person, or place you require to get things done. For example, list all phone calls that you need to make under the phone context. Your grocery items list should go to the grocery store context. If you want to hold discussions with your team, you can create the office context. This context represents things that should occur in the office. One of the popular GTD mistakes that some experts discuss in podcasts is users creating unrealistic contexts.

Reflect

Many people do not execute the Getting Things Done review, which explains why the system hardly works for some people. Failure to review GTD consistently means that your tasks will be piling up. As a result, keeping pace with the system becomes a difficult task. While some users are conversant with the configuration of the system they will set and forget about it.

For stress-free productivity you should review your GTD system consistently and make adjustments accordingly to get things done. Clean and update your lists and drop invaluable tasks from your credible system.

Clean your mind to facilitate the smooth running of operations. TickTockLab professionals recommend that you should execute this process weekly. While the process may be time-consuming, it allows you to take control of your life. Some people use a simple review procedure every day to facilitate proper planning of their tasks.

You can execute the review process at the end of the day as you prepare for the next day. You can also incorporate it into your morning tradition. Scheduling your workday early helps you concentrate on critical tasks while allowing you to beat distractions and procrastination.

Engage

At this step, you will be prepared enough to get things done. Following the first simple steps gives you a sense of control and clarity over your day. You can express confidence in investing your attention, energy, and time for the appropriate next action. You will work freely knowing that you have captured every valuable thing and processed it into a credible system.

Finally

While everybody should focus on getting things done, some people struggle with the weekly review process.

The brain processes information but does not store it. You need to adopt a robust system to clear your brain. The system also prevents a situation where you have to keep on trying to remember stuff.

Getting Things Done is a popular time management system that many professionals use online.