Use Structure to Make Yourself More Productive

Do you find yourself sitting down to work on something, only to get distracted and have it take you twice as long as it should have?  Do you ever write yourself a to-do list for the next day that you should be able to finish, and then at the end of the day discover you’ve only done half?  Do you set goals for yourself for things you want to do, but never quite complete them?  If any of this, or something like it, has ever happened to you, this post is for you!  Keep reading, because I’m going to help you.

For a lot of people, myself included, it can be really hard to get things done when left to themselves.  Part of it has to do with motivation, but motivation is only the second step (the first being getting the task or idea in the first place).  You can have all the motivation in the world, but you’re still not going to get done if you don’t know how to use it effectively.  Motivation gives you the energy and drive to get to work, but you can’t run out of motivation before the project is done.  This is where things get mucked up a lot of the time.  Getting motivated is one thing; staying motivated long enough is another.  The tips I’m here to give you today are to help you be more productive and work more effectively so you don’t run out of motivation before you’ve finished.

Give Yourself Structure

There are a variety of ways to do this.  You can set yourself a daily schedule, a weekly routine, or a to-do list with deadlines on it for every task.  It doesn’t matter what kind of structure you use.  You just have to find something that works for you, and then stick with it.

1. The daily schedule – Give yourself a schedule to follow every day, preferably with times attached to it.  Make sure you give yourself down-time and breaks, but schedule in everything you need and want to get accomplished.  It you know what times of the day you work easiest, then schedule the things you’ll want to do least at those times.  Keep tweaking it until you get it right.
2. The weekly routine – Maybe you don’t have things that need to be done on a daily basis, or maybe scheduling every day the same would bore you to tears.  You can even use this with a daily schedule if that appeals to you.  Every day of the week, give yourself a few tasks to do.  This is a little more flexible than a daily schedule, and times aren’t necessary.
3. To-Do list with deadlines – This often works better in combination with one of the above two ideas, because it’s pretty unstructured by itself.  But it can work alone.  You simply make a list of things that need to get done, and give everything a deadline, even if it doesn’t really have one.

Don’t Get TOO Ambitious

When giving yourself things to do, make sure you don’t overdo it.  You’re not going to stick to a grueling 7-day-a-week schedule, and it’s just going to undermine your efforts.  Be realistic about what you can and are willing to do in a given day, and try to find a good balance.  Push yourself, but don’t burn yourself out.

Also, start small.  If you’re bad with schedules or routines, start out with only a couple of things on it and work your way up to more every week or so as you get in the habit.

The Benefits of Structure

Giving yourself a schedule or a routine to follow means that you have less you have to figure out.  At any given time, you don’t need to think about what needs to be done, you just have to do it.  It frees your mental energy to work on your tasks rather than using it on things like, “what should I do next?”

It also helps to keep you on task.  If it’s 2:30, and you’re supposed to plan dinner at 2:30, you’re more likely to do it than if you simply decide to plan dinner sometime every afternoon.

Predictability makes things more comfortable and reliable, as well.  We worry and stress less if we know how things are going to go.  Being unsure of things can make us tense.

Finally, giving yourself deadlines pushes you to get things done.  Even if the only person holding us to our deadlines is ourselves, if we can think about them as set-in-stone the way external deadlines would be, and we make a habit of meeting them, then they’ll become more like laws and less like options in our minds, driving us to complete our tasks.  For example, I set myself a specific deadline of 5 am to publish a blog post every day (except Fridays), and the more often I meet this deadline, the more important it feels to keep meeting it.  Back when I simply was posting without having given myself a schedule, it didn’t seem to matter so much if I occasionally didn’t get something written, and I wrote a lot less often.  Expectations make us work harder.

Closing Thoughts

Once you start practicing with a routine or schedule, and you find yourself sticking to it more and more, you’ll find yourself able to get more done.  You’ll have less wasted effort and wasted time if you give your time a job.  You’ll leave less undone because you’ll have dedicated some of your time to everything rather than just trying to fit things in as you do.  And you won’t have to make decisions about what to do with your time every step of the way during your day, because you’ll have already decided.  All that’s left for you is to DO.

What are your experiences with schedules and structure?  Do you feel you work better or worse with them?  Why?

– photo by Qfamily, courtesy of Flickr

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1. New Blog Schedule and Structure
2. Why New Years Resolutions are Pointless, and Why You Should Make Them Anyway
3. Why Goal-Setting Is So Important
4. Faking Your Motivation: Three Ways to Get Moving On a Project
5. Compulsive List-Making – The Line Between Being Organized and Being Neurotic