Routine High Productivity

The biggest obstacles to getting things done are two-fold. Firstly, factoring in the amount of preparation needed to do something on a ‘to-do’ list. Secondly, getting the mind aligned so that it wants to take action. When preparation and attitude align together then it’s easy to get things done and procrastination just vanishes. Without preparation you end up setting desires that cannot be easily fulfilled, i.e. not possible in the moment that you set out to do them. This quickly brings forth discouragement and we turn away from the frustration by indulging in distractions.

I have two tools that I use to organise myself for a highly productive week. The first is simply a list of things that occur over the week for each particular day (routine evening classes, group meetings, work commitments as well as special activities that I want to get done over the week). The second is my daily organisation. This is effectively a daily ‘to-do’ list with a whole lot of productivity reminders factored in to make sure that I get my head straight and my preparation done before expecting great results. All of this is designed to get a very realistic expectation on what I can achieve during the day and the preparation needed. By making things incredibly easy to do I get rid of the struggle that most of us to through in getting things done. It’s a very rational way of working out in greater detail what you will have to do anyway at some point if you ever fulfil any desire that you set for yourself. Here’s an example:

Daily Organisation

1. Set a major objective for each day
   1. Write a pillar article
2. Set several minor objectives for each day to engage in if and when progress on the major objective finishes or comes to a halt. Decide on either a list of minimum objectives to complete each day or else a time period to engage upon and then work until either the objectives are complete or the time limit is reached (I need to set limits otherwise I will set unrealistic standards for performance and activity)
   1. Respond to 5 posts on other blogs
   2. Play guitar and make progress on the new piece
   3. Contact Paul about the group meeting
3. Think clearly about the barriers to progress likely to be encountered with these objectives and decide on strategy and tactics and the level of experimentation (i.e. frustrating dead ends) likely to be encountered before the job gets done.
   1. The pillar article is a long one and I haven’t got all my thoughts together. I need to do more thinking and note taking. Once I’ve done that I need to organise the structure of the article. The writing will go easily if I have prepared well. Editing might prove difficult as I’m still a bit vague on the precise message that I want to convey. Set a minimum two-hour session and see what results at the end of it – at least I will have made some useful and definite progress.
   2. The guitar piece is very new and challenging. It has some very difficult chord sequences to learn. I’ll have to break it down into little pieces and it’ll be very frustrating in the early stages.
4. Organise for batch production – this is to enhance the possibilities of getting in highly productive days on relatively easy processes that can have a big impact on writing, blog traffic growth, personal development.
5. If in doubt and feeling indecisive about what to do next then do more preparation work, or problem solving work, to move the job forward and to ensure high productivity in another session, if I cannot realistically get everything done today (that’s a very different activity to problem analysis!).
6. If, after doing all of this planning and preparation to have realistic expectations and easy progress I feel weak in my mind and don’t want to act then do negative-affirmations and focus on the losses to come from not acting and of the utter uselessness of avoiding the moment.

If you struggle with procrastination then check out this article as well:

http://www.nickpagan.com/blog/4/procrastination/

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