Unscramble Your Brain & Get More Done

Do you ever have those days where despite having a well organized to-do list, you still can’t get anything done?

I do.

It seemed to happen fairly often, to the point where I needed to question what was going on. Some days I’m ultra productive; thrashing through an arms length to-do list, and some days I just can’t seem to get started or I waste countless hours checking stats and stock prices.

Even on days when I followed my favorite productivity tip from Four Hour Work Week of preparing my to-do list the night before, I still had days of getting nothing significant accomplished.

The Answer?

It turns out that it wasn’t me, it was the list! More specifically it’s all in how you present the items on your list.

I studied my lists on the good or productive days, and on the crappy or wasted days and found that there were in fact two very different types of chores I was giving myself.

The real problem tasks would show up on my list as something like [this is a fictional example ]:

Bake a cake

Seems harmless enough right?

The problem with bake a cake, is that it isn’t a task, it’s a process. It can’t be done in one sitting without any thought or planning. You can visit my story about business systems for a bit of background on processes and tasks.

I discovered that having processes that require thinking on a to-do list rather than simple tasks was the root cause of my unproductive days.

These ”bake a cakes” as I’ve now nicknamed them, were acting like heat seeking missiles towards my brain’s clarity.

The Right Way to To-Do

Rather than a list full of high level items like “bake a cake” scan your list for items that are actually processes (meaning they can’t be done by a single person at a single sitting) and break them down further into one-person, one-sitting items.

Bake a cake becomes:

• find recipe and print it out
• shop for ingredients and other supplies 
• pre-heat oven and measure ingredients
• follow steps in recipe
• once the cake is cool, ice the cake

Those are tasks rather than a process of bake a cake. You can see that to do all of these will require at least a couple “sittings” but even more importantly in order to “bake a cake” you must break it down into these steps and think about how to co-ordinate all the steps. 

Thinking Is Unproductive, Who Knew?

There is a time to think and a time to do, but the two don’t seem to go together very well. If I am in “doing” or “getting things done” mode, and a thought or idea rears its unproductive head, now I just jot the “thought” down and continue doing.

What caused the problem was having to dissect the high level “bake a cakes” and figure out all the component steps while I was in the middle of trying to get the steps done.

Thinking is actually one of the most counter productive activities. It constantly disturbs the flow of productivity.

Since I’ve been aware of the differences and have weeded out all the processes and broken them into tasks, my productivity has increased dramatically and the enjoyment of my work has gone up as well.

A Major Side Benefit

Once I realized the distinctions between tasks and processes, it has become much easier to outsource both. I realize that a stumbling block to getting help has been that I wasn’t clear enough about what I wanted help with, and how to properly express it to another person.

I feel like with my new and improved to-do lists, I’ve become a much better boss to myself, and that has opened the door to be an effective employer.

If you find yourself spinning your wheels, or you want to boost your productivity, try being a better manager towards yourself and breaking the items on your to-do lists into bite sized tasks.

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