Good Habits are the key to productivity

Every time I think I have cracked this productivity thing, it comes back to bite me. I wax and wane with the business of habits. But in the last few weeks I have read some articles online that make it really clear to me that the route to success is paved with good habits rather than goal setting.

When we set a goal, we create an expectation but none of the steps to get there. We also create the scope for fear and procrastination. Big “hairy” goals can be completely overwhelming. Exciting when we imagine them, but paralysing when we get into action mode.

It is much more productive to get the processes right – and that comes from habit-forming.

So far this year I have put in place some new habits – daily short meditation and 500 words a day of writing. It’s a good bedrock on which to build productivity. I have many other little habits that get me through the day, the week etc. Some of the less frequently repeated habits are flagged in my task manager. I use Remember the Milk as a key tool to remind me and build in these habits.

I have written on this blog before about the constant challenge of email management. It is something where I have still not built a healthy habit. This is a great place for me to waste time and revel in indecision. Like many people, when I am tired and unfocused I tend to be less decisive. I need to be clearly deciding what I want to do with each item as it appears and then sort it – either do something quick, defer it or schedule it in Remember the Milk, archive it or delete it. It’s not difficult. This 4-choices decision approach is taken from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. (If you haven’t read that yet, you really should!)

Being decisive is really helpful and is easier if we work with these 4 choices. Note that there isn’t a choice to just leave the email in the inbox and come back to it again. That is when things start to fall apart.

Next, we need to make sure that we don’t live in the email inbox (or any of the other places where alerts appear (Slack, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc etc) If I practise a daily habit of email management at set times and no other time – that leaves me free to get on with focused work at other times, rather than drifting into my inbox.

Also published on Medium.