Productivity 101 — WFH Edition

I don’t know about you but my weeks tend to go one of two ways, with absolutely no in-between

Option 1 — I spend the whole week slacking, tasks take 30% longer to complete, I feel drained, unproductive, tired and guilty.

Option 2 — I have a fantastic week. Get lots done. I am genuinely busy and it gives me energy, fills me with motivation to work harder, to learn more and makes me appreciate and love my job.

As I said, there is never an in-between. Hopefully what you get can get away from these 2 options is a clear distinction — being productive makes me happy, makes me feel energetic, positive and fulfilled in my role, slacking makes me feel drained, exhausted and frankly, a little dumb.

Over my university and working years, I’ve tried and tested multiple ways to increase my productivity and therefore increase my fulfilment. Some worked, others didn’t and I think it’s important for everyone to really find what works best for them. It’s by no means a “one size fits all” and I’m not going to try and justify that the techniques I list “fit all”. It’s simply what has worked for me and if 1% works for you great, if not, no harm done.

MORNING 101 ☀️

My morning routine is my anchor. It is something that I will never, ever sacrifice. They say that it’s important for everyone to “wind down” after a days work. Well I think it’s just as important to “wind up”? (some seriously great English right here 😬). What I mean is, I think it’s just as important to prepare to shift into a working mindset as it is to shift back into a “I’ve left work, it’s my time to relax” mindset.

I’m not a person that can jump out of bed, straight on the laptop and get stuck into work. I need to ease into my day. I wake up and I go for a 15 minute walk while I read my book (yep, I’m a crazy individual who reads a physical book while out walking in the park 📕). During pre COVID-19 times, this used to be equivalent to my daily commute, where I listened to music or read my book on the bus.

I’m also not a person who can skip breakfast and function like a normal human being. So I take about an hour (yes, an hour) to have my breakfast and my coffee. This is routine for me, it relaxes me, wakes me up and get me in the right mindset to work.

Now that I know that I’ve taken over an hour of the morning for solely “me” time, I can get started on work. I don’t feel the need to catch up on the news, social media, books or TV in the morning during work, because I’ve done all those things in the hour I’ve dedicated to myself.

Your morning routine doesn’t have to be walking or even breakfast. But do something you enjoy, something that wakes you and energises you and brings you clarity.

GOAL SETTING 🗒

I love Monday mornings. There is something so refreshing, motivating and energising about a Monday. It’s a fresh start to do better than last week (especially when you’ve had a less than productive week).

To ensure for maximum productivity, I’ve started writing out some actionable, concrete goals for my week every single Monday. These goals may look like:

• Complete Jira XYZ-9937
• Get Jira FGYR-989 merged
• Review Jira YTY-888
• Spent a minimum of 6hrs on productive work
• Write documentation for X

Or it may look this this:

• Prepare for X presentation
• Speak to Y about X
• Spend a minimum of X hours working on Y

The key takeaway here is that, these goals are not reaching for the moon and the stars. They are the minimum requirements that will make you feel fulfilled and productive with your workload. You may get all these things done within 2 days or maybe within 4 but the point is, they are your sole focus and it would make you feel productive and effective in getting them done.

The goal here is to be as specific and actionable as can be. Some weeks, your goals may contain a list of 6 or 7 items. Other weeks, your goal may solely contain one important goal such as speaking to someone about something you’ve been delaying for too long. The trick here is that no matter what, these goals will get achieved.

Come Friday, review these goals. Tick them off and pat yourself on the back. Now you’re going into the weekend feeling a little more fulfilled and motivated for the Monday coming.

The key here is to use every bit of that energy and motivation that Monday brings to push yourself to achieve at least a minimum set of requirements.

DAILY PRIORITISATION ℹ️

For me, every single day at work is different than the last. There are different tasks or issues that come up unexpectedly from day to day that need my attention. It’s the thing I absolutely love about my job but it can make it hard to plan your week. Instead, I use daily prioritisation.

Everyday, after daily standup, I write down on a little sticky note, all the tasks that I should get done today or that need my attention. I then prioritise them based on things like:

• How does a task align with my weekly goals?
• How much focus does it require?
• How urgent is it?

For example, completing a development task would be priority that would require my deep focus. I know that I’m at my most focused early in the day, so I would put that task down as number 1 for the day. Replying to emails and messages, reading documentation or catching up on meeting recording, are good tasks for the later part of the day when I’m less focused, a little less energised and need some less brain demanding tasks to pass the time and finish the day.

LUNCH, LUNCH, LUNCH 🥗

I don’t think anyone should ever skip lunch or have lunch at their desk. I know demands are different on everyone but I heavily rely on my lunchtime routine, just as much as my morning routine.

Again, I take a walk and read my book. I take a full 40 mins to eat my lunch slowly and sip on tea while switching off and watching a favourite TV show or something else that doesn’t require my brain to work.

Whatever it is that you do, wether its exercise, cooking, meeting a friend, phoning someone or even doing your laundry. Take time out to decompress, refresh and replenish.

I always find the second half of the day so much more difficult to complete than the first, so it’s essential that I take some time out to properly eat and relax before finishing off the day.

TIME TRACKING ⏲

In order to force myself to be a little more mindful of the time I’m spending on certain things, I time track my day.

It looks something like this:

When I set myself a goal of completing a minimum of 6hr of productive, working time, I track it simply using google sheets. Because it forces me to acknowledge all my breaks and all my activities, I’m suddenly a lot more conscious of time I’m spending doing menial tasks. Because I generally hate to not achieve things (not be able to cross something off my goal list 😢), I get quite competitive with myself in trying to reduce mindless activities on social media during work hours or doing activities which I can’t even categorise because they go something like this “chatting to someone about something completely unrelated to work while replying to WhatsApps” 😉 .

This also allows me to see where my priorities lie and if my time is being spent wisely. AKA, am I spending more time on slack/emails rather than actually working on my Jiras?

POMODORO 🍅

I’m sure everyone has heard of the pomodoro technique and if you haven’t, look it up 🙂

I stand by using this technique for any big task. Bigger tasks can get very complex very quickly and sometimes it’s hard to keep focused when you feel like there is a million small things to do. I find this during some bigger development feature tasks. What I’ll usually do is, list all the small subtasks in a given tasks that can be split into logical parts of the puzzle. Then I feel set my pomodoro timer to 25 minute sprints, with 5 minute breaks in between with a final 15 minute break after 4 sprints.

You’d be surprised how fast time flies. When you tell yourself, you only have to do 25 minutes before you get to go back to instagram or whatever way you do to break, it suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. And usually, what you’ll find is, when the timer rings, you’re so in the flow that you nearly don’t want to stop.

I even bought myself a physical red egg to represent my pomodoro 🙂 🍅

I found that using pomodoro timer apps on my phone, ended up distracting me slightly because I had to have my phone visually near me.

AVOID DISTRACTIONS

“Do Not Disturb” on your phone. Lock that phone away. Simple and effective. Makes for much more interesting pomodoro breaks when you can finally have a look at that phone and then you have no guilt for doing so 😉

SURROUNDING & ENVIRONMENT

Working from home has certain benefits and one of them is being able to have some control over your surroundings. Clutter and noise make me uneasy and make it hard to focus. I try and optimise my work station for absolute bliss.

Candles, candles everywhere. Safe to say, that would be a huge “no no” in the office but at home I have the freedom to have a candle lit on my desk constantly. It’s amazing what something so small can do for my overall focus and alertness.

Find your “candle”. Be it some fresh flowers on the desk, pictures of friends or family, whatever helps you relax into your work environment. It’s so simple yet so effective.

There is an instrumental book worth mentioning here and it’s called “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. It was recommended to me during a career development workshop at work and it’s really pushed me to explore all the ways in which I could be more focused and productive. It is clear, concise and it is so actionable. It’s realistic and talks about the pitfalls that come with “follow your passion” and other unrealistic expectations that makes us think that hard work is not the product of our success but some other external factors like “passion”. It is truly inspiring and some concepts from this blog were taken from this book such as the time schedule section.

Get on it 🙂