What are the components of a productive day?

1. The best version of yourself

Every good day starts with a good night’s sleep, so the best way to start a productive day is presenting your best self. That is, a rested, comfortably dressed, unflustered and fed representation of yourself. This calls for some planning which I eluded to in an earlier article, https://livingloudonabudget.com/how-to-stay-organised-and-maximise-your-time-everyday/ if you have done the necessary planning then you are able to show up on time, unflustered as you were not caught in traffic, didn’t drop your child off to school without their lunch and have had time to have some kind of breakfast after having a good night’s rest. Planning the night before is the key to waking up on time and ticking all the boxes you need to tick before you walk through the door or before you begin your work day.

2. Set plan for the day

If you walk through the door, sit at your desk and then ask yourself “what am I going to be doing today”, chances are you are not going to be very productive. Persons who get the most out of their day do so because they have that day planned out on paper, or on an electronic calendar and go over the day mentally sometimes from the time they awake and certainly before they walk through the door. Sure things will pop up which needs to be addressed but if you are now realising at 9:00am that you have a meeting at 10:00am, chances are you are not prepared.

3. Stick to the plan 

That to-do-list you created is there for a reason, it’s to keep you on track, stick to it. (https://gitcofinance.com/2020/01/06/how-to-stay-organised/). Learn to say NO to non emergencies, this may mean letting persons know that unless the building is burning down you are unavailable. Avoid letting persons add to your list by holding them accountable for their task, stop trying to save everyone, remember everyone has their specific roles and in order for the team to work, everyone must be pulling their own weight. Also, decline those unnecessary meetings where there is not set agenda and if you convene a meeting respectfully send out the agenda ahead of time so persons can come prepared and stick to the agenda.

4. Create an email strategy

For busy executives emails can be a real thorn in the side as there are persons who can easily amass over two hundred (200) emails a day. Without some type of strategy you can spend so much time reading and replying to emails and feeling overwhelm. Decide whether you will tackle those emails first thing in the morning or periodically throughout the day with a limited time spent on them, or whether you can have an assistant read the pile and only send the emails that are deemed to be needing a response from you. An email strategy can also mean being removed from email groups that you don’t need to be a part of, don’t be afraid to ask your IT department to help with that. 

5. Schedule breaks 

Lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, clear your head breaks, what ever is necessary to keep your mental and physical health in tact during the day. Visit a colleague in a different department, find a hiding place where no-one can find you. Yes, that may be necessary, I have had a few of those as I had employees who would follow me to the bathroom and wait outside the door. You can also use this time to communicate with your employees especially if you were focused all day, it’s always good to schedule some time to check in with the team to see how everyone is doing.

6. Focus

There are many theories on whether humans can really multi-task as much as we think we can. Whether you believe in multi-tasking or doing one task at a time, give it your undivided attention. By doing this you are sure you won’t have to redo a task because your mind was elsewhere and you can touch a task one time instead of having to go back to it multiple times. If you are working in an environment that is not conducive to staying focus, there are many offices like this unfortunately, you may need to engage headphones to block out the chaos. I was never a fan of headphones in the office, until I worked for a company where the office was like a circus all day, that was the culture, sadly I joined the headphone club just to be able to focus daily.

7. Mind your business

May be another form of staying focus, but keeping your eyes on your paper will increase your productivity during the day. You know the office gossipers, they are not talking to you, you know the co-worker who must tell everyone about everything that transpired since they left the office yesterday, they are not talking to you. You know the water cooler/coffee station persons who takes thirty (30) minutes to start their day, you are not one of them. Mind your business and eliminate the distractions. 

8. Seek assistance

To stay on task, don’t hesitate to seek assistance, this may be in the form of requesting assistance from the Head Office or from an external partner. If you are unfamiliar with a new program or procedure, there is no point in wasting hours struggling with a task. Seek assistance and revert to the task later, bearing in mind that the person may not be able to assist you that day, as they  themselves are also trying to stay on schedule.

9. Forget perfectionism

Establishing the boundary of quality work and perfectionism will save the day, it is always our mission to feel good about the work we are creating but when you are rewriting that report for the third time you have to ask yourself how much more value it will add. 

10. Avoid procrastinating 

Establish timeline to your tasks, this goes back to planning, but if you give yourself enough time to complete tasks and achieve these targets you will feel better about your day. This also allows for those times when things don’t go to plan or for the days when nothing goes to plan, you will have time to recover as oppose to feeling defeated and trying to play catch up and then a bad day turns into a bad week or even a bad month because you just can’t catch up or worst now you are working on the weekend to complete task and completely stressed out.

By utilising some of these strategies you should be able to manage your working day to be as productive and efficient as you desire. See which ones work best for you and tweak according to your personality, if you are a morning person, focus on your biggest projects then,  the key is to have a plan, stick to that plan and limit the distractions.