In this ‘Power Productivity’ series, we are looking at ways that you can progress easily in your writing and manage your environment as much as possible to help propel you forwards.  This strategy is a double whammy – it is difficult to separate them, so tips 3 and 4 are all about prioritising and avoiding procrastination.

These are productivity boosting strategies that are difficult to implement but essential to ensure peak productivity.  Think of how you usually start each day – probably with the best of intentions.  Today will be the day you get through your entire ‘to do’ list, get a chapter of your book written and do a few of those niggly jobs that are not urgent but you never seem to have time for!  Does this sound familiar?

We start each day with our ‘to do’ list of what we want to achieve… and then ‘real life’ takes over!  Emails are flying in, post arriving, phone calls, a problem crops up that needs your immediate attention – you get the picture.  It’s easy to fight all these fires and get to the end of the day to find you didn’t do the task that you really wanted to achieve that day, let alone all the other things.  This is where prioritising and avoiding procrastination come in.  These skills are all about discipline and being realistic.

A lot of people under estimate the amount of time that a job actually takes and what they thought was a 10 minute job becomes more involved and takes 1 hour. Sometimes we get distracted whilst on the job, the job takes longer than we’d allowed, it became more complicated than you thought or perhaps you didn’t really want to do the task so you busied yourself with other jobs whilst avoiding the dreaded task and hoped it would go away!  It happens to us all, and the best way to get around this issue of a ‘never ending’ to do list is to pare it down.  Just have just 3 things on your to do list each day – That’s all.

People might start the week with a list of 15 things they want to do that day and it just does not get done.  Perhaps the weight of the list intimidates them, they wake up in a bad mood which hinders their productivity, they get an emergency to deal with and their 15 jobs go out of the window.  To reduce the ‘to do’ list to just three things is more manageable.

Three things you can do in one day even with all the distractions that the day will bring.  You can complete your three things for the day, every day and by the end of the week you will have done 15 things without stressing!  The discipline comes in here– you have to create good habits that mean you are not wasting time which will stop you completing your three things.  A great way to avoid procrastination is to keep a clean desk. Do not have piles of paper around you that need dealing with –only have the essentials because you cannot get distracted by all you have ‘to do’ if it is neatly filed somewhere waiting for you to make it one of your ‘three things’ that day.  Get a concertina file and handle each paper once.  Operate by the mantra “file, do, recycle, shred” and put actions to do into your concertina file on the date that you plan to do them.

Another essential way to take the option to procrastinate out of your way is to avoid possible distractions from coming to you in the first place by removing yourself from any mailing lists you don’t need to be on. On emails you can click ‘unsubscribe’, via post you can call the marketing dept of the company who sent it and be removed and also register with mailing Preference Service. (www.mpsonline.org.uk ) to stop junk mail. You can also register with telephone preference service so you don’t get junk marketing cold calls (www.tpsonline.org.uk) – these websites are for domestic customer and you can access the business/ corporate site from there to register any company details.

To stop unwanted marketing calls on your mobile phone, register your mobile number to be removed from the 118 mobile phone directory which launched mid 2009.   www.118800.co.uk This is a directory of everyone’s mobile phone no’s and if you want to choose who your number goes to and not have it given out to anyone who buys a list, opt out here and cut them off at the source!

The Power Productivity series contains 5 top strategies for kick starting your writing activity.  The last article in this series concentrates on avoiding time leaks including how to get out of any event that you don’t want to attend but usually say “yes” to!  Don’t miss it!

2009 © Nadine Hill