Joy Journal

Every Friday, you can receive the Joy Journal, which will give you information, inspiration and tips that you can use in your pursuit for joy.

Planning for Productivity

Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

I’d like to continue the conversation started last week about productivity, as it, along with appropriate workload, are such critical factors to achieving and joy. A few things have been percolating in my brain since last week:

How often are you planning for productivity? By this I mean, deliberately and proactively blocking off chunks of time on your calendar to get things done. Admittedly, I am hit-or-miss on this one. I may think about it in my head but rarely actually block the time (and then also respect it) on my calendar.
What if you blocked time for productivity before you scheduled meetings? I think many of us look at our already planned meeting schedule and try to find productive time with what’s left. Imagine how your productivity could skyrocket if it was prioritized over meetings.
How often are you letting your inbox prevent you from being productive? We can feel tethered to our email and regularly prioritize it over everything else—creative time, productive time and personal time. Did you know that it takes about 25 minutes to return to the original task with the same concentration level after an interruption? Letting email interrupt you constantly throughout the day is a productivity killer!

I, by no means, proclaim to have mastered any of the ideas and share the same struggle with productivity so let’s declare together to try to implement these ideas more often.