Scott Porad

I posted this on the Cheezburger intranet this morning:

The key here was making a to-do list instead of having my inbox be my to-do list.  Once I actually went through all the e-mail and made a list of things to do, it was really easy.  Here’s how I did it:

Last night, I did all the prep work.  I went through my entire inbox and removed each item.  Where appropriate, I moved it to my to-do list.

Then, as a final step, I prioritized the list.  Not the entire list, but the top 5-10 items.  This was simple…I looked at each item, asked “is this important?” and if it was, I moved it to the top of the list.

When I sat down to work this morning it was super straightforward to be productive: just start working down from the top of the list.  Easy peasy.

All of this was based on two things I’ve heard.  First, that a key to being productive is getting off to a fast start in the morning.  And, the way to do that is by making a to-do list for tomorrow at the end of today.

Second, I friend told me about a co-worker who:

• made a to-do list of only three items each day
• made the commitment to finish those items that day no matter how long they took, and
• did no more than the three items on her list in a given day

So, if she wasn’t done with her three items at quitting-time, then she stayed until she was done.  Or, if she was done at noon, then she left for the day.

“How was her productivity?”, I asked.  ”Off the charts,” my friend replied.

Essentially, this is a tortoise-vs-hare issue.  Most of us are hares: we make huge to-do lists and don’t get much done.  The tortoise proceeds slowly and methodically and wins the race.

To summarize, improve productivity by getting off to a fast start by making a to-do list for the next day before you leave for the day, and by taying focused on a small list of to-dos, and committing to getting them done.