How To Be Productive, Not Busy
2Description
It is so easy to be busy rather than productive in today’s world. With so many notifications and things screaming for attention, oftentimes, we could simply spend an entire day being busy without getting anything done.
So how can we focus on the impactful and make the most of our days?
In this episode of The Personal Excellence Podcast, I share
- 6 tips to be productive, not busy
- Why you should not start your day with chat [1:25 ]
- How to separate communication between inner circle loved ones and others [4:50 ]
- Why I turn off alerts and notifications [8:21 ]
- How to deal with incoming emails, alerts that you need to respond to [10:59 ]
- Starting your day with a priority to-do list [12:44 ]
- Why you shouldn’t beat yourself up when you go off task [14:49 ]
- Using batching to group similar tasks [17:07 ]
- How to create your 80/20 to-do list [20:32 ]
- Using a “Will do” list to defer incoming tasks [20:32 ]
- The importance of delegating [21:59 ]
- Why delegating was my Achilles heel in the past [22:42 ]
- 3 factors I used to determine when to delegate [25:05 ]
- 5 questions to ask yourself in a weekly/bi-weekly audit [29:16 ]
- Asking ourselves WHY, WHAT, and HOW as we live consciously [30:20 ]
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Read the transcript for this episode here.
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How To Be Productive, Not Busy [Transcript]
Welcome to The Personal Excellence Podcast. The show that’s all about helping you be your best self and live your best life. Now, your host, Celestine Chua!
Celestine Chua: Hey everyone. That is Celes from PersonalExcellence.co. Welcome back to the podcast!
Today I want to talk about productivity — specifically how to be productive, not busy. I feel that in today’s world, it is so easy to be busy rather than to be productive. That’s because we have so many notifications, alerts, to-dos, things screaming for attention. Oftentimes, when we are not aware, when we are not conscious of it, we could simply spend an entire day just doing things, rushing from place to place, clearing item after item. But these things may not be the most impactful things that help us move towards our goals.
So today I want to share some simple tips, six tips in fact, on what we can do to focus on being productive rather than being busy.
1) Don’t start your day with chat
My first tip is don’t start your day with chat. It is very instinctual to want to open your chat application in the morning and see who messaged you. Thinking, What do I have in my chat inbox? What messages do I have? It feels exciting because you are getting messages from people, people you care about, or new people you just met. Also, it is sometimes like a little gift, like each message is a little gift and someone has a special message for you and you want to see what’s that. So I totally understand that.
But unless it is an off day where you are not working, for your work days, I recommend not starting your day with chat because it can easily derail your day into a series of chat exchanges where chat is your main focus, as opposed to what you need to get done. This is especially true if you are an entrepreneur, you control your day, you control your routine, or if you are a freelancer. It is very easy to have your entire day derailed because of chat or even because you are looking at your social media news feed. You know, the social media platforms today. I shared in a previous episode on FOMO, the fear of missing out, about how social media applications and platforms today are designed to get you to come back to the platform.
When you start your day with chat and this may be a chat application or a chat tool built into a social media platform, you have already entered their arena where there are all these design elements designed to get you to come back to the website. From the notification button color to the placement to the user interface, and so on. The best way is simply not going into chat at the beginning of the day. But instead focusing on the things you need to do.
Another reason is that at the beginning of the day, our energy is at its highest and you want to direct that to the highest purpose activities on your to-do list. As opposed to pumping that into chat because then you’ll be putting your best energy into chat messages and replies which may not be the best use of your energy.
There is an exception to this rule, which is if the person is a family member, an important loved one, like your partner or your kid. With these people, you should have a channel where they can easily access you. So this could be chat, this could be some other channel. That’s because there could be some urgent family matter or important issue where they need to notify you. Having this instant access lets you know if there anything that you need to tend to and so on.
This is where there is a conundrum. Because then you’ll be wondering, Oh okay, if I need to be easily accessible to these people, the problem is when I check messages from them, I will naturally see messages from others. My answer is to use two different chat applications. This is if you find that it’s worth doing that. Using two different applications: (1) One for your super important, inner circle loved ones. The people who need 24/7 instant access to you; and (2) The second for everyone else.
The good thing is there are so many applications today. Line. WeChat. Whatsapp. Facebook. Telegram. And so on. Simply designate one app to everyone else, I guess the default channel that everyone uses like WhatsApp and Facebook. And use a different channel that very few people use. Use that channel and allocate that to just your loved ones, like your parents or siblings or your spouse, your children. This way you have a separate channel that’s just for these people and you can use that without all these non-stop notifications, all these elements trying to pull you in. At the same time, you can still connect with the other peo
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