It seems like there is never enough time in a day or time in a week to get everything you need to done. We often end our days going to sleep thinking about all of the things we didn’t get done instead of celebrating the things we accomplished. Going through this cycle day after day is exhausting and the only cup that will be full, will be full of cortisol. So below are a few easy things you can start incorporating into your routine that I promise will make your weeks feel less crazy. 

Stop Scheduling Back to Back Meetings

I still haven’t figured out why so many have a tendency to do this, but enough with the back to back meetings. I think the brain functions best if you cap at 3 - 4 meetings a day (and even that is a lot). If you already have three meetings one day, give people availability on other days first. The pandemic and the ability to do virtual meetings has exacerbated this issue. There are two primary reasons I caution against this. The first is that, well… it’s exhausting. It is mentally draining and you spend your entire day hopping from meeting to meeting talking about things that need to be accomplished but not actually accomplishing anything. As a very Type A person… Gross! 

The second, is that having time to process and map out next steps after a meeting is where good work can become great work. I’ve often been recapping a meeting I had with a client and as I was mapping out next steps and summarizing the conversation had new ideas or additional clarifying questions come up that I didn’t think of while we were in the meeting. If you have a meeting at 10:00 AM and you don’t get an opportunity to map out next steps and assign any necessary work out to your team until 4:00 PM, I’d be willing to bet that you’ve already forgotten at least 30% of the conversation. If you’re not taking notes and mapping out next steps from your meetings at all, then what’s the point of even having the meeting? 

Plan Out Heads Down Work Time on Your Calendar

Treat your work like you would an important client meeting or call. If you know that you have a project that needs to get finished and you need an uninterrupted hour, put it on your calendar. By adding it to your calendar, you keep others from scheduling other meetings over your intended time, and you give yourself a visual commitment to work on that project you’ve been putting off. It also removes the guilt factor, so if you have people sending you chats or messages you can just not respond, and as long as they’re resourceful, they will look at your calendar and realize you’re busy. Believe me, if it’s an emergency and they need to get a hold of you, they will. 

PS - One more small addition here, you should also make sure you close your email and isolate your tabs or move to a new browser window. If you’re like me, you don’t want to get distracted by all of the other things that you could be doing. 

Preserve the Most Productive Parts of Your Day

Everyone has different times of the day that they are most productive, but if the teams I have worked with are any indication I would say that no ones most productive time is from 3:00 - 5:00 PM. Studies have indicated that the most productive time of the day for most people is first thing in the morning, when your mind is fresh. If that is true for you, do what I said above, make time blocks in your calendar to preserve this time for bigger projects that take more brain power and focus. 

One of the things I have implemented with my teams to preserve this time is a “no chat” rule. Because, generally speaking, the morning is the most productive time of the day, combined with the fact that no one wants to be bothered with someone else’s “fires” first thing in the morning I implemented a policy that our team was not allowed to chat before 10:00 AM unless it really couldn’t wait. It’s much easier for people to actually commit to preserving this time when the rest of their team is doing the same thing. 

Work in 90 Minute Increments

I don’t recall where I first read about this, but when I did it changed the way I managed my teams. Here is a great article that does a deep dive into why our brains are wired to work in 90 minute increments. So often we will work all day without taking a break. We’ll get up to use the restroom, or grab some food and then bring it back to our desk, but our brains are just not build to work 8-10 hour days without breaks. While you may not notice it, after 90 minutes of working on the same project you’re just not bringing the same level of productivity or value to whatever you’re working on. 

I have found that most people have a tendency to procrastinate big projects. Be it because they don’t know where to start or it’s easier (and feels better) to knock out a bunch of smaller tasks than to focus the majority of your day on one thing that still won’t be done.  The 90 minute exercise is a great way to avoid this type of procrastination. If you break your project into 90 minute or less tasks and then spread them over the course of time it will not only save you from the procrastination stress of “I have to get this done before tomorrow,” but it will also have you producing much higher quality work. 

Start Your Day Identifying Your Top 3

On any given day most of us probably have way more that we would like to get done than is actually humanly possible. We are essentially setting ourselves up to be disappointed in ourselves. How cruel. So a simple way to stop being so hard on yourself is to start your day by identifying the top three things that you absolutely need to get done. Write them down. They don’t have to be big projects or time consuming things. They could be three things that together shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours to accomplish. At the end of the day, then you can feel accomplished that while you may not have gotten to everything you hoped to that day, you did accomplish your big three! Stop going to bed feeling like you didn’t do enough.   

I really could go on all day, I didn’t realize how many productivity hacks I’ve incorporated into my and my teams’ work styles. Maybe there is a round 2 in the future. I’d love to hear about any productivity advice you’ve given or incorporate in your business, or discuss any of the above further. You can also follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn, or sign up for my newsletter in the footer to for more tips. I promise I won’t spam you.