There are many lenses for understanding productivity. The one I find most helpful is to think of productivity as a way to work with awareness and intention. By spending more time “in the zone,” we find greater fulfillment and produce higher-quality work.
Here are ten strategies strategies I’ve gleaned from productivity experts that focus on being more intentional in work and life. Find a few approaches that resonate and build more intentionality into your life this year.
1. Journal Your Intentions
Spend five to ten minutes every morning writing or drawing your daily intentions in a journal. That sets a positive direction for your day. Many prefer to write or sketch in their journals by hand. Some research indicates that writing by hand (in an educational setting) promotes deeper processing. This may also be true for journaling. See The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard,
Journaling is an extremely popular productivity habit. Here are three ways to go about it.
- Prompt Journals: Respond to the same prompt every day.”What is one thing I want to achieve today?” or “What do I want to focus on today?” If you journal at night, you might ask, “What lesson did I learn today?” “What went well today, and what can I improve for tomorrow?”
- Bullet Journals: This flexible approach combines a journal with planning, organization, and brainstorming in one place. Using a simple structure, you track goals, note ideas, and reflect on life. See a complete Bullet Journal description.
- Morning Pages: Write three pages every morning using a stream-of-consciousness approach to inspire creativity and clear your mental clutter at the start of the day.
2. Create Systems to Meet Your Goals
At one time, productivity experts focused on creating measurable goals. Now, there is a more effective approach. Use goals to set direction, but create systems to reach the goals. That will help you work with greater intention.
A typical example is the goal of losing ten pounds. Create a system to support losing weight rather than using a goal as your focus. The system would be to eat a healthier diet, exercise five days a week, and track your change in habits.
In the context of intentionality, perhaps you have a goal of writing a book. To reach this goal, you need a system. You might wake up an hour earlier to write five days a week, join an online writing group for accountability, and subscribe to an AI writing tool to help edit grammar and punctuation errors.
It’s through systems that you implement goals.
3. Design An Environment That Supports Intentional Work
Optimizing your environment can be difficult for busy, creative people. But it does work. Create a clutter-free space in both your physical and digital environment. In your office, this usually means tidying up and getting rid of books and papers that are no longer useful.
Optimize your digital environment for efficiency. Arrange files and folders logically to find the items quickly. Audit your apps and software to remove outdated items you will never use. Delete duplicate files.
For the Mac, I find Clean My Mac to be helpful for these tasks. Find something similar for the PC. Once you have things in a reasonable order, schedule time for maintenance on your calendar.
4. Schedule Time Blocks On Your Calendar
Unless you schedule focus time on your calendar, its easy for the tasks to slip through the cracks. Start with scheduling your most important task. Recharge with breaks that fit your natural cycles. This is the best time to use your distraction-free strategies so you can concentrate.
Add some buffer time around your deep work so that if things slip here or there, you still have focus time available. Evaluate how well your time blocks are working and move them to your most alert time of day. See the next strategy for more on natural rhythms.
5. Schedule For Your Natural Rhythms
Chronotypes are the body’s natural preferences for when to sleep and wake, among other inclinations. Understand your chronotype to schedule accordingly and maximize your productivity. Match your creative and deep work to those hours when you have the most energy. During low-energy periods, schedule administrative and easier tasks.
6. Try The 52/17 Work to Break Ratio
According to DeskTime, a productivity software company, this rule states that 52 minutes of work followed by a 17-minute break increases productivity. If you have never liked the short spurts of the Pomodoro method, you may want to try this inelegantly named rule. During work time, you are focused and intention-driven. During break time, you exercise, socialize, or surf. In other words, ensure that the two time segments feel very different. You can adjust the 52/17 minutes to meet your biorhythm. See Does the 52/17 rule really hold up?
7. Leverage The Zeigarnik Effect
The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological phenomenon that suggests people remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Thoughts of unfinished work tend to hang around, creating mental tension. Therefore, completing short tasks that take two to five minutes reduces cognitive clutter. Rather than leaving them hanging around, you can then get back to working with intention.
8. Reduce Digital Distractions
To work deeply with intention, you must turn off the things that ruin your concentration. These are usually incoming emails, notifications, and the temptation to start browsing. The more time you spend focused on your task and free of distractions, the higher quality your work is likely to be. See The Seven Best Apps to Help You Focus and Block Distractions for help with building your willpower.
9. Use Tools to Speed Up Email Correspondence
It takes much longer to write an email than to read one. If you must respond to informational and other emails in the same way, use email templates (perhaps written by AI) and tools like Text-Expander. This will shorten the time spent on repetitive email tasks. Reducing all repetitive tasks frees up time to work with greater intention.
See Ten Working Smarter Hacks You Can Use Right Now for nerdy fun.
Leave a Reply