Refocused Living

Lots of people would like to become a more productive person, especially in their area of work. There are only a finite amount of hours in a day, but the litany of projects never seems to let up. The only way to accomplish more is to become more productive by working smarter and working in a more relaxed fashion… otherwise you burn yourself out due to stress. We don’t want that.

This post describes three methods I’ve found to be extremely useful in creating a more productive workspace. By “workspace” I’m referring to your work environment – whether that be at home, at the office, or busking in front of a subway station.

1 . Use a dry erase board to track important things.

One of the more recent things I’ve been doing is using a dry erase board to keep a running log of various things that are going on.

Right now, my dry erase board currently has notes on a future blog post topic that I’m going to be writing. Because I’m doing a lot of prep work for the post (personal trials, research, etc.), I want to keep all of that information in front of me. Whenever I look off to the side, I immediately see my notes and I stay on track – cool, huh? I also have a magnet on the board that has one of my favorite quotes every from Teddy Roosevelt: “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have!”

You can use a whiteboard to track a lot of different things, such as:

• Your goals - A lot of people use them for daily, weekly, and monthly goals. I’ve done this before, and I do love it – there’s something about always seeing your goals in front of you that spurs you towards action. If you always have your goals fresh in your mind, you have no excuse to procrastinate on something else!
• Quotas that need to be met - “Make ten sales phone calls” would be an example of a quota. When you finish with a phone call, put a tally mark by the quota. Personally, I also love making the tally marks while I’m filling up my quotas. Perhaps because the action of making those marks makes the quota feel much more tangible and realistic; it makes it feel more achievable.
• Dates, times, and reminders – This one should be fairly obvious. You wouldn’t want to miss a date, an appointment, or an important doing, right?

2. Keep your goals in front of you at all times.

The more you work, the more you realize that a thousand things can occur during a day that completely knock you off of course. Also, appearing busy doesn’t always necessarily mean that you’re getting anything valuable accomplished. Don’t try to fool me.

There are lots of ways you can keep your goals in front of you. Some people love and advocate putting up pictures around your house/office/place of work that adequately (and beyond) describe the goal that you’re after. For example, somebody who’s looking at shedding those pre-holiday pounds and wishing to gain some muscle might put up some pictures of people with toned up bodies without an ounce of fat on them. A variation of this theme is typing out, in large print, your goals and aspirations and printing out and using those instead of pictures.

You can do similar things on your computer as well. Change your screensaver to your goals. Change your background picture to a picture of your aspirations. There are programs out there that can act like Sticky Notes on your desktop – perhaps you wanna write a few of your goals down and stick them up on top of your background, as a constant reminder when all of your windows are minimized. (Just what you wanna see before you turn off your computer for lunch – “Don’t eat that slice of cake!” )

There’s really no reason you shouldn’t be reviewing your goals like this every single day. It might sound silly in practice, but it works. Without guidance, most people tend to falter. The pull of everything else going on around you is too great; there are too many things to become distracted by. If you don’t keep an eye on your goals, you’re going to get knocked off balance.

3. Let your desk and office space reflect who you are.

The biggest mistake when it comes to workspace productivity is trying to make everybody’s desk look homogenous. If you’re not exactly like everyone else, don’t try to be like everyone else!

Some people work well with lots of piles and clutter scattered all around their desk and office space with no rhyme or reason. To you, it may look like they’re about to skip town, buy a small trailer out in the boondocks, and live happily ever after with 20 stray cats. To them, it may be a highly efficient way of organizing materials that they need to constantly use. If you tried to use their organizational method, it’d drive you mad. If they tried to use your organizational method, they’d be booking their train ticket out of town faster than you can say “Here, kitty!”

Currently, my desk looks like something straight out of The Devil Wears Prada, and I couldn’t be happier. I have a small lamp which I use at night ’cause I don’t like working in super bright light at night. On the left side of my computer, I have a stack of personal development books I’m currently reading, reviewing, and taking notes on, as well as some other books which I’m reading for fun and information purposes. In the upper right hand side of my desk, I have a layout of some magazines (yes, just like Miranda!) that I flip through occasionally throughout the day. I like reading magazines because they’re often a great source of ideas for this blog, and they’re something very relaxing about perusing through a magazine that you enjoy. I also have a small notebook on top of my books that I use to take notes in. And of course, my laptop and mouse is right in front of me.

That’s it. There’s nothing else on the desk. There’s nothing directly in front of the computer; it’s empty space. There are no pictures of anything or anybody; there isn’t an inbox of any sort to collect random junk that gets thrown at me throughout the day; there’s no plant or decoration adorning the desk at all. In other words, my desk is clean, neat, and absolutely perfect!

You may not be like this. You may need to have a thousand folders strewn across the desk because the nature of your job requires you to constantly flip back and forth between one project and another. Or maybe you’re just passive aggressive with a hidden agenda against us neat freaks.

The point is simply this: let your workspace reflect who you are. Don’t be afraid to radically change your desk to look like somebody else’s if you think that another layout is going to get you better results. The end result is to become more productive – experimentation is your friend.

Now go make some changes!