The topic of today’s video is how you can be more productive in the limited amount of time you have during your day.
Some of you might be thinking that you can become more productive by getting up earlier and getting to work earlier than you usually do. The reason I am saying this because recently I’ve been asked by many students and scientists this question: “How can I get to bed earlier in the evening and start getting up earlier in the morning so that I can be more productive during the day – can you help me?” (We are talking here about people who get to their work place after 11am and feel guilty about it)
During the Master Class in the productivity course that I offered during the past two months to the PhD students – where we had this question coming up several times – I gave the following advice: introduce an evening ritual to help you go to bed earlier, and include in it some elements that will help you wind down for the night. The same for the morning: introduce a morning ritual to help yourself to get out of bed and get yourself ready to be the best you can be during your day.
This article that I posted earlier in my blog walks you through the concept of a morning ritual and gives you several suggestions to help you design your own. You can totally take advantage of this, design and introduce a morning ritual into your day – this WILL help you be the best and most productive you can be during your day. Every morning I follow a morning ritual that I’ve designed for myself and share this information with every private client that I work with – and they say it really helps them.
There was a problem however that we seem to have run into with the students and other scientists whom I was helping to find ways to go to bed earlier and to get up earlier. They would say: “Ok, I’ll get up at 7:30am, get out of the house by 8:30am and be at my desk by 9am”. And when I ask: “And then what?” – they would not know what they want to be doing at this time of morning at their desk. They would tell me that they may check and respond to e-mails or look at the data of that project that is not going very well.
Unfortunately none of the suggestions seemed to be such that would definitely move them forward to achieving their bigger goals. Some of the people who were trying to get to the office earlier would not even be clear on what their bigger goals are. (If you’ve been following this blog for a while you KNOW that this is the first thing you start with if you want to become more productive – get clear on your bigger goals).
To shift your sleeping pattern to earlier hours, especially if you are not a morning person, could be a huge effort. If you do decide to do this, you need to know WHY you want to do this. You need to get clear on what things you are going to do that are SO important for your life and work when you do manage to get to your desk by 9am.
Now I want to look at this “problem” from a completely different angle and suggest that you don’t HAVE TO get up early in the morning to be more productive. Our society and our culture may be telling you something different: it is a pretty common and accepted belief that when you get up early in the morning you are more productive. And if you are the person who gets up late and starts the day late – you might be feeling guilty about it, and let me tell you that feeling guilty is definitely NOT a good way of starting your day.
I also want to suggest that this belief is not necessarily true: everyone is different, people have their own sleeping pattern, and changing and shifting it can actually screw it up! One of my private clients who was trying to shift her sleeping pattern actually ended up with loosing her sleep completely. As the result she could not do any work during the day – quite the opposite from becoming more productive, don’t you think?
As scientists we often have flexibility in when we come to work – so we might as well take full advantage of this. And today I want to share a tip with you on how you can become more productive during the limited amount of time you have in your day without necessarily shifting your sleeping pattern.
In your day you have a so called Productivity Zone – it is an hour or a couple of hours when you are most productive and effective, this is when you are most fresh in your thinking, feeling inspired and motivated and being your best mentally and physically. For a lot of people it does occur in the morning hours, but some people have their Productivity Zone during the day or in the evening or sometimes even at night.
If you can just figure out WHEN your Productivity Zone occurs, and then use it to schedule your most creative and most important work during these couple of hours – you will become much more productive! If you don’t “waste” this precious time being on Facebook, checking your e-mails, chit-chatting to other people or going to the meetings that you know are not very efficient or informative – you can then schedule this time for working on your thesis, writing your research paper or designing a new project.
Your Productivity for Scientists assignment for this week:
1) figure out when your Productivity Zone occurs: from which hour to which hour of the day or night? (For example my Productivity Zone occurs from 7am to 9am, and it works very well for me at the moment, as the rest of my family is usually asleep at this time, and working from home this is when I do my most creative work);
2) get clear on how you are going to protect this time; and
3) get clear on how you are going to use this time to become more productive – what important tasks you are going to schedule for this time?
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