Week 5: Productivity

In last week’s edition of the newsletter, I detailed my insights from trying different time management techniques to find each one’s strengths and limitations and when/for whom it could be best applied. After having shared this with some of my peers both inside and outside of university, trying it out with them and gathering their feedback, one of the main points they brought up was that the techniques I had explored looked at time management on a more macro level, i.e. looking at the 24 hour day and breaking down how best to use that time. The article was very much focused on time allocation and prioritisation of tasks.

The feedback encouraged me to look at time management on a micro level and how to complete individual tasks as quickly as possible. in other words, I was looking into how to reduce procrastination and increase productivity for a given activity. The methods I attempted have been documented below:

Two-minute rule

One of the techniques recommended to me was the two-minute rule; upon searching this rule up I came across two different meanings/interpretations of the rule, both of which were useful tips for reducing procrastination. Firstly, the rule advises spending two minutes on a new habit to make it stick, i.e. start with small micro steps for a big habit or activity you are about to introduce. For example, opening up a meditating app or clearing space for you to meditate is a quick first step that encourages you to sustain the activity for a longer period; going to the gym for a long workout may feel daunting beforehand, but doing something quick like setting out clothing the night before or jotting down the exercises you would like to do makes you more likely to stick to it.?

This concept was brought to light by James Clear in his book ‘Atomic Habits’ and whilst it is focused on habits, I have managed to apply it to each activity on my schedule. Opening up Microsoft Word or Excel and planning out my answers to my coursework questions for two minutes was enough for me to persist with the assignments instead of procrastinating due to the task feeling overwhelming and daunting. Oftentimes it is starting an activity which is the hardest part, and the two-minute rule is a quick and effective way to address it; you don’t have the mental pressure of doing the entire task in one go from scratch and just two minutes of putting your mind to an activity can help to produce ideas and break down complex tasks.

The second meaning behind the two-minute rule was more challenging for me as it initially conflicted with the Pomodoro method that I discussed last week. In short, this meaning of the two-minute rule is to look through your list of activities and identify any of them which you can complete within two minutes, thus prioritising them to do immediately. The rationale is to have them removed from your to-do list and free up space to mentally focus on the bigger and more time-consuming projects. As much as I understood the rationale and somewhat agreed with it, I questioned whether this would be compatible with the Pomodoro method that I’d implemented over previous weeks, where the idea is to remove small distractions for blocks of time and attend to them later on rather than immediately.

Upon further reading I noticed that I was falling into a common misconception about the two-minute rule and realised that setting aside two minutes to complete these tasks should not always be done immediately under each and every circumstance. When you are in a flow state of work and have achieved strong focus, interrupting it with a quick two-minute task (assuming this is unrelated to the task you were previously working on) damages productivity and sets you back. Some of the steps I used to rectify this included: dedicating one entire Pomodoro (25 to 45 minutes) to do multiple two-minute tasks; doing my two-minute tasks during my 10-minute breaks; and doing two-minute tasks either all in the morning or all in the evening (depending on the importance and urgency of the bigger tasks).

Eat That Frog

‘Eat That Frog’ is a self-development book by Brian Tracy and is essentially a cool way for saying ‘perform the most challenging task first thing in the morning’. Whether the task is the most mentally challenging (assignment or project) or physically challenging (workout at the gym), the idea is to do it as soon as possible in the morning when you realistically have the most energy and your brain is most switched on. When I introduced this into my daily schedules I expanded this into a ‘top six’ list where I chose the top six activities on my to-do list which I found the most challenging (aka the ‘frogs’) with the biggest frog at the top and going in descending order from there. This can help if you struggle to get through the biggest frogs in a day (even if you’re able to complete plenty of other smaller frogs). Going through my top six (where I wouldn’t attempt frog #2 if I hadn’t completed frog #1, and likewise wouldn’t attempt frog #3 without getting past frog #2 and so on) meant that even if I was to not accomplish all six tasks, I would at least have gone through the most important ones.

On a couple of occasions, the ‘eat that frog’ method conflicted with the Eisenhower Matrix that worked well for me in previous weeks, as some of the biggest frogs I had to accomplish were often important but not urgent. Meanwhile, on those days I had other important tasks that were more urgent but not so challenging, yet their urgency meant I had to address those first thing in the morning. One of the main things I had to realise with all these different productivity/time management methods I have implemented, is that not all of them will be compatible with each other in every scenario, and it is important to be flexible between different ones. Gaining experience with all of them and having them in my arsenal is a good thing but trying to shoehorn all of them together all at the same time made some of my days more challenging and was one of the biggest lessons I learnt.

SMART goals

SMART goals help to put your goals and objectives into perspective via the parameters of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. The best way I would try to summarise all of that is: when you have a goal you want to achieve, you must ensure you have a way to quantify and determine the goal to see if you have succeeded. The goal needs an accurate deadline so it encourages you to work more efficiently and productively, but not so far-fetched that it makes it highly unlikely for you to achieve such a goal in such a tight cut-off point.

The acronym played an important role in my productivity and time management because it forced me to re-evaluate the deadlines I had imposed on myself for each of the tasks I set out to do. The SMART concept made me realise that to attain a high level of work academically (university and skills) I needed to impose more lenient and realistic deadlines than the overly ambitious ones I had set that placed a huge burden and weight on my shoulders. In addition, my physical goals (exercise and nutrition) were missing the M component from SMART and needed to be measured better, whether it was measuring my calories or how I would measure my progress at the gym. When parameters are introduced to your goals, it gives you a clearer idea of how well you are performing and progressing, and where in particular you can close the gap in case you are not.

I am extremely grateful that some of my fellow peers took the time to read and provide insightful feedback on my previous article, as it helped me to discover some new productivity techniques that I either had not come across before (like Eat That Frog) or had not explored in further detail until now (like the SMART goals). As always, I am open to hearing any feedback from you on this article and all my previous articles: they have evidently helped me explore new avenues and ideas that I can document in some of my future editions.