How to Effortlessly Get Your Work Done, Everyday.

When you start a day with no plan or direction, you find yourself pushing through it just to get the right things done. It’s an exhausting, inefficient and ultimately self-defeating way of going about your day.

On the opposite side, you find you are pulled through the day with a plan and a direction. Your day feels effortless, and at the end of it, you have energy to spare for doing the things you want to do.

I have often written about the importance of daily and weekly planning sessions. These sessions are the glue that brings together your life’s multiple strands. These are not time-consuming — the daily planning session is ten minutes, while the weekly one is around thirty minutes — but the time cost to you, if you don’t do them, is enormous. Ten minutes deciding what needs doing next, a thirty-minute session surfing through Google searches because you cannot bear to look at your task list for fear of what you may have forgotten. These all add up, and none of them helps you to complete your tasks for the day.

How do you turn things around and go from pushing through the day to being pulled?

This starts with having a plan and structure for the day. Now you could theme days if your work is structured. For instance, you could have a report writing day on a Monday, a communications day on Tuesday and an admin day on Friday.

If your work is not so easily structured, it’s still possible to theme a day or two. Salespeople can use Monday morning to set up appointments for the week and Fridays to clear their admin tasks.

Having a theme for the day removes a lot of decision-making. When you begin the week, you know your first task will be to make calls to set up appointments. You don’t have to think about what to do.

Processes for doing your work

This one is how I get my work done each day. I have a process for doing all my work. For example, on a Tuesday morning, I open up my writing app and begin writing next week’s podcast script.

I keep a list of all the questions I have been asked, and I consult that list to find a topic linked to my theme for the week. I then use that as the subject for my podcast.

There’s no staring into space trying to come up with an idea. The ideas are already there in the note. It’s open up Ulysses > select topic > write.

Having followed this process for the last four years, I know how long a script takes to write (two hours), so it’s easy to allocate sufficient time each week for this task.

I have processes for managing my email, writing client feedback and preparing for a coaching call. I have consistently followed these processes for so long that doing the work is automatic. It feels effortless.

Every activity you perform as part of your work has a process. It’s when you mess with the process that things fall apart. Allowing interruptions when you’re doing something that requires focus, or answering your phone when you are face to face with a client, should be absolutely no nos.

It never feels like I am pushing. It always feels like I am being pulled through the day.

Having a plan for the day.

Every productive person you will ever meet will always know what needs to be done today. They will have either reviewed their task list the night before or first thing in the morning. They will have ensured sufficient time to get that work done with a little to spare in case of unexpected events.

Planning the day is not complex or time-consuming. All it involves is deciding what you will work on the next day — ten minutes tops.

Now, some work will take care of itself. For example, if you are a dentist, you will have numerous patents to see. They will already be scheduled in your appointments list. But what if you need to call in at the bank to sign some papers? Leaving that to chance won’t work. You have to plan for it. When will you have time to go?

Likewise, when will you do your exercise for the day? When will you spend some time with your family? Without a plan for these things, they will slip. For example, your seven-year-old daughter’s request for help with her homework will be an annoyance instead of a beautiful opportunity to be a part of your daughter’s life.

Automate the day.

Having a system for managing your email is a form of automation. Likewise, time blocking essential elements of your work on your calendar generates automation. For instance, I know between 9:00 am, and 11:00 am, I do content work. Now the only decision I need to make is what content I will create. Blog posts, podcast scripts and essays are done on a Monday and Tuesday. Videos are recorded on a Friday.

This automates my decision-making process because 70% of the decisions are already made. All I have to do is choose the topic. And as illustrated above, I have a process for doing that.

You will always feel you are pushing through the day if you have no system or process to do your key work. However, when you have a process and a system that automates the critical parts of your work, it feels effortless. That’s how you get pulled through the day.

Feeling exhausted and mentally drained at the end of a day results from pushing all the time. Deciding what needs to be done next and how to do it is exhausting. Having a plan and a system in place simplifies and makes things much easier. It’s less demanding on your limited mental energies and leaves you with energy to spare for the activities you want to do.

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