A Clutter-free Schedule For The Best Productivity

I am, what they call in the new-gen circles, a multi-functional person, leaning mostly towards the artistic side of things. But I am trained and work as a Software Technologist, which involves a lot of analytical and logical thinking. To bring a grand mix between these two is my struggle of everyday life!

Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash

My struggle gets aggravated because I tend to be talented in several things, and my time every day is split between many aspects. While I try my best not to be too clerical and mechanical with numbers and logic, and try to apply art in whatever form to get me going, at one point, my schedule became unmanageable, and I lost control over having an organized day, which to me is a big deal.

So, I sat down and started analyzing what went wrong. I read through several articles from ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ to time-boxing, and there seemed to be some common pattern emerging. I did some more exercises further to ascertain myself that I am in the right path, and there are indeed some things that really worked well for me, to get over my time management problem. Here they are:

1. Allocate a reasonable amount of time for work that matters, without interruptions. You might think ‘Oh, I can finish this in 10 minutes and move on to the next one’, but believe me, if you really want to do something well, the activity not only involves doing the work, but also the mulling-over-it part of it, which puts apart a good-job-done from an excellent job. So, allocate considerable time, plus some buffer time, to get things done.
2. On activities that need to be just done without much thinking and needs a check-mark, just get it done and move on, without wool-gathering. I tend to spend a lot of time patting myself on my back for a job well-done, while it is no big deal in the long run. So, quickly come out after execution, and move on.
3. Restrict the social media to a few minutes, and be alert about not to get in scrolling. Our social media platforms are all scroll-supportive, and bring in torrents of information and images which are diversely varied, which puts a lot of stress on our brains, and that leaves us anxious, confused, and sometimes depressed. If you want to track a specific topic, or learn a specific skill through social media, use hashtags to track the topic through social-media tools or the native facilities to track topics in some social media platforms. If you are using social media for a break or entertainment, that’s okay, but have a time limit. If you use social media for your work, make sure that you stay on course in your work, and get out of it when you are done. Just snap out of it!
4. Don’t mix business with pleasure! What do I mean by this? Let’s say I enjoy music very much, and I am working on completing my composition video and uploading it in YouTube. I observed that I get caught enjoying the music I have done, and forget the work at hand! To enjoy music for pleasure is one thing, and working on putting the work out for business is entirely another! So, allocate time to enjoy, and get the stuff one when you need to.
5. Last but not the least — if you are multi-talented AND scatter-brained, organize yourself through mind maps during your activities about what you are going to do, and how you are going to do it. For example, if I am doing a video which involves slides, music, web research, talking to experts, and reading books, I organize myself by making a mind map of what I am doing with which tool/activity, so that I don’t get overwhelmed or forget focusing on the task at hand.

So folks, these are some tools to help you get time-organized. Not everyone is strong-headed and be able to have a perfect control over their mind, so it helps to follow a few methods to get us better focused!

Done? Now, move on to the next activity!