A couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the enemies of productivity and how overtime undermines our performance exponentially: more hours, more fatigue, less motivation and less performance. Shortly after publishing it, a reader contacted us for help. She works in the public sector, and is currently experiencing a period of intense work overload, with marathon work days. It is not in her power to stop working overtime, and she asked us this question: “How can I avoid entering the spiral of unproductivity that you talk about? "I work long hours and I only have half an hour to rest." The answer is productivity techniques . They help us compartmentalize work, to undertake tasks in a more orderly and effective way.
Today we are going to talk to you in an introductory way about some of them, many come from the field of software development, but they are equally applicable to the craft of writing. 1) GTD (GET THINGS DONE) In fact, in other articles we have already planted the seed of this productivity technique. And it all starts by "sweeping C Level Executive List the mind", that is, writing down everything we have to do, remember, or what we want to follow up on... even ideas scattered in our head, such as improvement goals or new projects. In short, everything that requires our present or future attention. We will put it in a series of lists so as not to have it taking up space in our heads. The steps to follow to implement GTD are: Collect .
We will begin by doing an exhaustive search of all the “open fronts”, all the tasks, large and small, that we have pending. We will search emails, notebooks, text files, etc. We are going to deposit everything in the same place: a notebook, a Word document, post-it notes on a cork, etc. Process . This is the part where you ask yourself the nature of the task: “what is this?”, “when does it have to be done?”, “what priority does it have over the others?” You analyze the tasks one by one, in order, to be able to move on to the next step, which is to classify them. There are flow charts with the questions to ask, but it is best to have your own. Organize . Lists that are too long are not operational.