Personal Productivity Pointers give you the tips and tricks that productivity masters use to get more things done. Using Lean thinking to keep your ideas and your outputs flowing, you’ll turn your to-do list into a to-done list. It’s like a shot of espresso for your daily grind.
Want to know the secret to making the most of your capacity for personal productivity? Get a bucket!
Yes, you read that correctly. A bucket. Not what you were expecting? Allow me to explain. Although there is not much to be learned form the bucket itself, masters of productivity know that it’s how you fill the bucket that counts.
Try this experiment for yourself. Grab yourself a bucket and “fill” it with large rocks. Keep going until you can’t fit in another rock. The bucket is now full, right? Wrong! It’s only full if you think if all you have are big rocks.
Now, take some small pebbles and put as many into the bucket as it will hold. Notice how the pebbles fill in the empty space around the rocks. Are you surprised by how many will still fit into the supposedly full bucket? Now the bucket is full. Or is it? Again, it’s only full if all you have are rocks and pebbles.
Next, try adding sand to the rocks and pebbles. Hopefully you’re starting to see a pattern. Surely, now the bucket is full. After all, nothing could be smaller than a grain of sand. Could it?
Pour water over the sand and notice how much more the “full” bucket can hold! The question remains, however . . . is it full now?
What can we learn from the bucket model, and how does it apply to personal productivity?
1. The Master Productivity Mindset
We all have a bucket, which represents our personal capacity to do great things. We’re also inclined to believe that our buckets are always full, if not overflowing. Productivity masters however, start with the belief that the bucket is never full. It doesn’t matter the degree to which that is necessarily true, as it doesn’t do us any benefit to believe otherwise. New levels of productivity can always be achieved through continuous improvement, which starts with the belief that there is always room to get better. In other words, there’s always a way to get more into your bucket, and the answer is not just to make the bucket bigger!
2. The Smaller, the Better
Making the most of our productivity capacity requires that we break up our deliverables into the smallest possible tasks. Smaller units of work allow us to take better advantage of the empty spaces in our bucket, and give us better flexibility when things don’t go perfectly to plan. However, smaller tasks also give us an oft-needed psychological boost as well. Not only is it much easier to start a few tasks that may only take only 15 minutes than it is to labor away for an hour straight, you also get the added mental motivation of crossing several tasks off your list rather than one.
3. Order is Critical
If you’ve cut down your activities to the individual task level, and you are still stuck with rocks – actions that require an hour or more of continuous attention – schedule them first. That is not to say that you should do them first, which is a topic for another post, but the time should be placed on your calendar before any smaller tasks are committed. Longer periods of work are inflexible and can often be difficult or impossible to squeeze in if you wait too long. Next, similarly schedule the pebbles – tasks that take 15 minutes or more – into the empty spaces between the rocks. By now, your calendar will likely start tolook “full”.
Now you’ve reached the point where extremely productive people make better use of the empty space in their buckets. Rather than scheduling each individual grain of sand – the 5 minute, just-do-it type of tasks – create a simple running list somewhere that is readily accessible to you. Do not set aside time to do these items, but rather knock them out in the time that most people would typically waste. Do the important and the urgent tasks first thing over your morning cup of coffee. Send those quick emails while waiting for the elevator. Leave that voice mail while walking to your next meeting. Why set aside valuable working time when there is easily a half hour or more every day of small voids in your bucket? Fill the space by trusting that these times will always be there and by plugging in the tasks that can be completed at the drop of a hat.
To be a true master of productivity, however, you will need to find ways to fill your bucket with water. Water is not composed of firm, unyielding tasks. Water flows. Water seeks out places that solids can’t. In the world of productivity, pouring in the water means using a bit of creativity to automate routine tasks, so that your output flows between the sand, the pebbles and the rocks on its own. There is no script on exactly how to do this, but I can share with you a few examples from my own life. For one, I prepare all of my social media communications and blog posts on the weekends, when I have ample time in the morning, and I rely on technology to share these items at optimal times during the week when I am occupied with the demands of my day job. While technology can be a blessing, it is not necessarily a requirement to achieve automation. For example, in my household, we have developed a simple system that automates the creation of our weekly grocery list using only a pencil, paper and masking tape (a future post for The KaiZoine @ Home). The only limit to your ability to automate your productivity is your creativity and ingenuity.
Remember, anyone can make best use of their capacity for productivity by remembering the bucket model. Start with the belief that your bucket is never full and then break your tasks down as small as possible. Schedule the rocks then the pebbles and maintain a running list of the small stuff that you can check off when you have a couple of free minutes – and know that you will have plenty of time to do so. Finally, automate what you can through technology and simple systems to take full advantage of the empty space. Do these things and you are well on your way to becomming a personal productivity master!
Do you have a personal productivity pointer that you would like to share with The KaiZone Community? Post it in the comment section below or use the Contact The KaiZone link and share it!
Editor’s Note: I’ve been following the bucket model for many years. The idea is not my own, and I would like to give due credit to the originator, but I cannot remember exactly where or when I first heard of it. If anyone knows the source of the bucket model, please let me know in the comments section below or by using the Conact The KaiZone link.
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