Wednesday, November 2, 2016

How to spend the first hour of the workday for maximum productivity



How to spend the first hour of the workday for maximum productivity

Do stuff that matters, in the first hour itself

Let's divide work into two categories. There's work, and then there's real work. `Work' is email correspondence, and group meetings, and other tasks that are necessary, but don't meaningfully contribute to your professional success. Real work, on the other hand, encompasses those bigger projects and tasks that help you achieve your goals and your organisation's. That is according to Laura Vanderkam, the author of several books on time-management and productivity, including most recently, I Know How She Does It.  Vanderkam recently shared a practical tip for doing more real work and less `work'. Put simply, schedule a “power hour“first thing every morning, when you work uninterrupted on a top-priority project.

This isn't as easy as it sounds, especially when you arrive at the office to find your inbox overflowing and your boss on your case about a new assignment.

But if you don't at least plan to spend the first 60 minutes of your day on something that matters, you may easily find yourself spending multiple hours wading through your inbox, attending to things that aren't necessarily important or urgent. “We have to consciously choose to spend less time on email and carve out time for the important work that matters to us,“ Vanderkam says.

For most people, the morning tends to be the best time to work on high-impact tasks. A `pro-level' version of this strategy, Vanderkam says, is dedicating all of Monday morning to a bigger task that's more speculative and requires some deep thought. Vanderkam likens this technique to “paying yourself first“ or putting money .into your savings account before you spend it on anything else 

Source | Economic Times | 2 November 2016

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co

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