This piece originally appeared in The Productivityist Weekly newsletter. My weekly email is now called ATTN: and I’d love to send it your way. Just click here to make that happen now or sign up using the form at the end of this piece. Thanks!
If you’ve ever watched my 3 minute TEDx talk, you’ll see that the central theme is in order to be more productive, focus on the task at hand rather than the time on hand.
Sure, we’re all trying to get a lot done – especially during the holiday season. We’re all feeling the time crunch with so much to do in a limited amount of time. I’d suggest that the likelihood of getting everything done over the next month is going to be incredibly challenging, if not impossible.
When you start to look at what is the most important item you want to get done, then you will find time will work for you instead of making you feel like time is working against you.
Over the next few weeks, you’ll likely have less work-related tasks. Instead, you will be spending some time with family, catching up on some leisure reading, and so on. Things will start to slow down, and that’s when you can really start to notice that what you’re doing is far more task-oriented than time-oriented.
Sure, you’re doing those things because of the time of year, but what would happen if you started to shift that kind of mindset after the holidays? Time will always play a role in our lives because we don’t live in silos, but it doesn’t need to take precedence over the tasks in our lives.
This simple adjustment can really make a big difference in your productivity and in the quality of your life as a whole.
Start thinking more about the task at hand than the time you have on hand. Right now is one of the best times of the year to start doing so, and you may very well be able to carry that line of thinking through to the year ahead.
