Almost everything we planned or captured will be changed in our every day events with changes in priority and importance.  It is important to habituate capturing your whole-life productivity.  You are a resource to yourself.  Therefore, you need to plan yourself as a resource in a single calendar to streamline your own schedule.  Think, why should you allow yourself to be scheduled and managed in two different calendars?  It’s like working for two bosses!

There are two main things that are associated with your calendar to harness maximum productivity.  Often, we regard the calendar as a tool for us to plan ahead and allocate our resources accordingly.  This way, we disregard the other capability.  That is the ability to look back the things we’ve done and make the necessary adjustment in optimizing our schedule.

First, the most basic function of the tool is the ability to fill in all our data in the calendar.  You fill up whatever free slots in the day with project work or tasks to achieve your goals.  You look at the remaining slots and see if they can be further optimize.  This is good forward planning.  However, sometimes we can be blinded with completing of tasks or planning ahead that we lose ourselves in the process.

Second, which most of us oversee it (which also is an essential part of personal productivity), the calendar provides us to look back and evaluate what happened that causes delay or glitches in the things that you planned before.  Too often, we do not give ourselves to learn the mistakes we made and find answers from ourselves and work best.  This is particular useful as you will not be entangled with the same problem when you make plans for it in the future.

Having said these, the core principle behind calendar planning is self-discipline.  You can have a calendar but it can sit there and do nothing.  Data is rich but never utilized is a meaningless logging mechanism that you are employing.  Keep in touch with your calendar and let it serve you well.

Why is planning essential?

• Planning reduces your stress level. How?  Proper planning gives you the peace of mind that you have formulated appropriate measures (and planning) for achieving your goals.
• Planning prepares you for obstacle. Risk planning we term it.  Contingency measures are put into place for your activities so whenever there are unforseen issues, you are always ready for it.  Of course, we are unable to plan for all risks or situations.  But at least, we can cover most of it and be prepared for the problems.
• Planning allows us to evaluate our progress. Through planning you are able to know how efficient you really are and if targets are met.  If not, you might want to adjust your timings or set the right expectations.

What are the strategies we can use in planning to achieve our goals?

• Define your goals. That is the very first step to planning.  Take a few minutes in the day to write the goals.  You need to start somewhere before you can plan for it, right?
• Brainstorm the tasks required to achieve the goal. Write down all the tasks that is required first.  Order them in logical steps.  Assign an estimated time to complete each task.  This will give you a rough gauge of the total time required to achieve the goal.  Also, it gives you clear steps of what to perform at that point of time.
• Define the roles that you will take in achieving the goal. This is helpful where you put yourself “in” the task.  You won’t get confused of what you are supposed to do or why you are supposed to do.  Also, this allows you to prevent redundancy of who is doing what.
• Schedule the tasks. Now put all the tasks into a schedule.  It can be a day or it can be a week.  You need to know what you have to do at a given time.  That’s for the daily schedule which also helps you track your progress and determine if you are on time a not.  While the weekly schedule (or maybe the monthly schedule) is important for the overall success of the project.
• Evaluate your performance. As the project progresses, evaluate your performance continuously to determine if you are on track or need to adjust the schedule.  Always take a few minutes of the day and review your schedule and make changes accordingly.  The key thing is be flexible with your schedule.
• Fine tune planning process. Sometimes it’s not possible to follow tightly to the planned schedule.  After each completed goals, do a review if the planned and executed dates were in line.  If it did, good for you.  If there are improvements or things didn’t work out as per planned, fine-tune it!

Let’s identify the types of interrupt that can happen in the office.   People can interrupt you and break your train of thought.   People dropping in or calling to strike a conversation.  Calls or emails that distract you from the task at hand.  Outside noise or commotion that keeps you from focusing.   That’s external, you’ll be surprised that there are interrupts from within too.   Times when you interrupt yourself.  Remembering something you were supposed to do.  Being distracted by piles of paper or disorganization.  Spending time on unimportant non-priority tasks.   Letting your mind wander away from the focus of your work… procrastination…

Start by keeping a track of the interrupts that occurred in the day.  Use an interruption log.  Record times when your concentration is broken.  Whatever that caused it, note the time, reason, person interrupting, and how long it lasted.  You will discover that there are patterns to your interruptions.  With this, you will recognize the cause to prevent interruptions.

Furthermore, you need to change your mindset in handling interrupts.  Remember, very few interruptions are both urgent and important.  Get out of the habit of dealing with items the minute they come in.  It’s more productive to schedule the item into your day later.  Stay focused on the task at hand until you complete it the rest of the work will still be there when you finish

Now, it is important to setup rules for dealing with interrupts. Like, who you are ready to break work for and who must wait. Face up to greet folk so you control the conversation.   Don’t be scared to ask how long the interruption will take then judge whether you have the time to handle it now or later.   Ask if you want to be the one to deal with the interruption. If someone else can help, delegate the job ask if you need to handle the problem right at that exact moment.  If not, schedule a time to take care of it later when interrupted.  Leave a memory logger of where you left off work.   It is going to be simpler to get into the groove when you come back.

Lastly, let co-workers know the times when you’re not available. Turn your desk away from the door so you do not catch folk’s eyes. Tell co-workers “no” when they ask if they can have some minutes. In return, establish “open door” hours for drop-in’s and questions. Invest the time up front to totally explain delegated projects.  Be clear and concise in your delegation.  This will avoid “clarification” questions in future.

With all these, interrupts will be put to a stop (at least to the minimum) and you find yourself getting productivity back on track.

1. Plan a list of tasks to be completed in the day.  Planning is straight forward.  The difficult part is to stick to it!  Do not be influence by external forces.  Focus on what you had planned out
2. Focus one task at a time. Do not toggle between tasks.  It’s counter productive as you need to reset your context every time.
3. Put injects aside unless it is of utmost urgency or it is of substantial strategic value.  Focus on the task or else, you won’t be able to complete it.
4. Stick with the normal lunch break hours.  Sometimes it is great to reward yourself a longer lunch break but avoid the temptation to habituate it.  That is 1 hour.  No longer than that.
5. Stop chatting on the instant messengers (e.g. MSN, ICQ, eBuddy and Google Talk).  You won’t be able to concentrate on your task as you need to switch back and forth between the messenger and your task.
6. Avoid surfing Facebook and Friendster.  What is productive with playing Restaurant City, following what others are doing or checking out friend’s profile?
7. Avoid surfing aimlessly on the internet for jokes and games.  Come on.  There’s nothing productive about it.  Do something meaningful.  Do it when you have the free time or needed something light at work.  If you spend more than an hour a day doing this, something is quite wrong with you at work…
8. Avoid meaningless conversation with co-workers such as gossips and rumours.  Learn to say “no”.  You got something important to do now.  Striking a conversation on your co-worker’s latest Coach Bag maybe important to your co-worker but it may not be yours.  What’s important to you?  Getting the current task done, right?  Weigh out what’s important to you.  And do not worry of hurting her feelings.  Your co-worker would definitely be able to look for someone else to strike a conversation with.
9. Avoid taking tea breaks that is longer than usual.  It’s sometimes good to reward yourself but as the same goes with lunch breaks, avoid the temptation to habituate it.  You can achieve more things than taking tea breaks.

The list may suggest that we do not allow “leisure time” to exist in the workplace.  It can exist but not too much and not at the expense of the needed for important tasks.  Also, the list may suggest that we work like machines and close all doors of communication with your co-workers.  Not at all.  Do it at the appropriate situations.  You still need to socialize with your co-workers to build rapport.  Sometimes it’s unnecessary to talk about your co-worker’s cat but sometimes it can be a lightening topic.  Our advice, is keep it minimal and always think back what is the most important thing for you to do (continue the conversation with your co-worker or continue with the task that is supposed to be delivered the coming Friday)

What are your super-productive tips?

We’re going to introduce you a power concept that will make you efficient and productive at work.  It’s called the 24-hour pay check.  It’s the base principle in getting self-disciplined for time management (good time management requires self-disciplined).  Everyday, you are given a pay check of 24-hours.  No more, no less.  However, this “free” pay check can only be utilized in a day.  Like a one-day voucher at the shopping mall.  You cannot ask for more (time) in the check nor can you deposit and reuse it for another day.  You have to use it in that day only.

In a normal weekday, you spend 7 hours sleeping.  3 hours traveling to and from the office.  You work average a day of 8 ½ hours with lunch breaks included.  Now how much time do we have left?  That’s an estimated 5 ½ hours left in the pay check.  With the remaining 5 ½ hours left, you need to have breakfast, buy groceries, shower, dinner and washing the dishes.  Say that takes another 3 hours.  You’ve got 2 ½ hours left.  These 2 ½ hours will be your only leisure and self-improvement time.  Not forgetting if you have kids, part of the remaining hours will be used attending to their needs… And all this CANNOT be brought forward to the next day!

Now you can see that time is a precious commodity and we should treasure every expense of it.  Using this powerful concept, we can identify what are the time wasters and what are the things to do to be productive.  The time spent at the workplace is an average of 8 ½ hours.  1 hour is used for lunch break.  ½ hour is used for tea break.  Another ½ hours maybe spent at the water cooler on gossips and rumours.  Back at your desk, you enter into procrastination mode for another ½ hours in and out throughout the day.  You received an average 6 phone calls of 5 minutes interval every day and this sums up to another ½ hour being used.

How much time is left from the 8 ½ hours?  We’ve left with 5 ½ hours… yes, we’re not finished yet.  You have to handle fire-fighting tasks such as co-workers’ enquiries/requests and attend to emails.  That will be another 1 ½ hours.  You spent time chatting on the instant messenger for another 1 hour throughout the day.  This includes time to respond to your buddy and time wasted flipping your tasks and the instant messenger.  Finally, with all the things going on in the workplace, you give yourself another ½ hour of personal breaks throughout the day.  Let’s not also forget that there are people who spend time reading newspaper or looking at stock prices at work…

Now how much time do we have left?  Only 3 hours is left for you to do actual productive work.  Can you see how much time is really effective used if you were operating daily like this?  If you can optimize the time, wouldn’t you be able to achieve more things in a day?  Now re-look your daily schedule in the workplace.  Does it resemble anything like that?  If it does, our advice is you need to rethink of the important things in life (and office) for yourself.  Of course, “important things” can mean differently with people.  But if you stumbled upon here seeking for time management solution, you will know deep in your heart the definition of “important things”.