Fuelled by Coffee

7 Productivity & Organisational tips when your routine is disrupted I like structure and moving in straight lines. I keep a bullet journal with daily tasks and a habit tracker and my best work days are those when I know that I’ll be in my office to get stuff done. This year has been one of huge disruption for my husband and me – he has been on a lengthy recovery journey from cancer surgery and complications which have already lasted 12 months and are likely to go on for another 6-8 months until he achieves full recovery. We live rurally, in the Clare Valley, South Australia, and his treatment has been at hospitals over 100km away from our home. There have been many days of hospital stays, several surgeries and daily treatments going over several months. The weekly travel kilometres have been astonishing, and there have been   many days on the road. As a result, my structure, organisation and productivity have taken a hit and I’ve had to look at ways to manage my need for or...

  If multitasking doesn't work -  what can you do instead? Last week I wrote about the perils of multitasking , but I don’t believe it’s at all useful to illustrate a problem without offering a solution – so here are some suggestions which will help you stay focused and get the job done – one job at a time! Single-tasking – create a priority list and prioritize one task at a time. Give this task your full attention, complete it or make significant progress, and then move on to the next one on your list. Working this way can lead to deep work, where you’re immersed in a task and can get a lot done. Time Blocking – try scheduling specific blocks of time for different tasks or groups of tasks. This can reduce the mental load of deciding what you must do next and helps ensure that important tasks get the time they need. The 80/20 rule – The Pareto Principle where 80% of results come from 20% of the work you put in. Focus on the 20% of your to do list which are the most import...

We think we’re clever when we multitask –  don’t do it! We pride ourselves on our ability to do more than one task at a time, to split our brains into sections which focus on different jobs concurrently! Yep, we can do that. It’s very clever of us, but it comes at a cost. The multitasking we do results in more errors and stress and eventually leads to burnout. Last week I wrote about chasing shiny objects and being easily distracted from our core work as a result – multi-tasking is a bit like that. We distract ourselves from all the tasks we are trying to do by thinking about too many things. It may work for a while, or it may work for minor unimportant things, but long term it doesn’t work at all. Because we live in such a fast-paced world we feel under pressure to get more things done more quickly, but there is increasing scientific evidence that multi-tasking isn’t the productivity booster we once thought it would be. It can do more harm than good. Multi-tasking can do m...

  Shiny Object Syndrome - and how to get over it! I love shiny objects – they distract me all the time! They either arrive in my email inbox, I see an interesting ad on social media or I have a shiny thought which takes me out of the work I am doing. Happens a lot! The problem with pursuing the shiny things is that they are incredibly distracting. The worst distractions for me are those which occur when I’m immersed in tasks I really need to finish. Something along the way triggers my mind into thinking of something else I need to do, or an idea I really need to write down or activate immediately – I don’t really need to do these things straight away, but the lure of something new is strong. ... the lure of something new is strong. A little digression – I trained in Transcendental Meditation (TM) back in the 1970s when it was a ‘thing’. This form of meditation isn’t as popular now with the advent of guided meditations, where you listen to someone throughout the process, or th...

My LSTT method - Later, Sooner, Tomorrow, Today. In my last blog I talked about managing our overburdened email inboxes and how to keep the demands on our time and energy down to more manageable levels. Now, I’m turning my attention to physical papers. There are tons of books on how to get things done, time management, organising and the like, but all of them require time to put them into practice. I have developed a quick and dirty way of triaging my workload and piles of paperwork which sit on and around my desk from time to time so that I get the important things done first. My LSTT method – Later . Sooner . Tomorrow . Today – lets you get your overwhelm under control and create order out of chaos. It works with physical paperwork and also for task lists if you are feeling overwhelmed. If you have a bullet list of jobs, then break them down on separate pieces of paper (laundry, baking, shopping, dog trimming, phone calls, etc) or create your own list on your laptop or other ...

I’m continuing on my theme this month of being organised. Quite frankly, it is easier thought about than initiated. It is extremely hard to remain organised. I laughingly think of myself as being fairly adept with technology and these days we’re really not supposed to have stacks of paper all over the place, as most of our correspondence, documents and other information travels to us through cyberspace and doesn’t require being printed out. Hah! I look at my desk at this very moment, and I am surrounded by papers – folders, files, envelopes, notes, notebooks, magazines, the list doesn’t end. Some I’ve brought in to my space of my own volition, but still more comes from my Post Office mailbox, from helpful others who want to show me something or leave me a book to read. I subscribe to a monthly business ‘subscription box’ – and it is absolutely the best sub-box I have ever received. It always includes a business book, so this has increased my TBR pile. I explained in my last blo...