Boost Your Productivity 7

There is no shortage of systems out there to help you with your productivity, be it branded ones such as Getting Things Done or ingenious home-made rubber-banded collections of 3 by 5 cards.

Seven questions worth asking of your personal system as you give it an Autumn/Fall Overhaul:

1. How do I decide priorities? If a decision is not made on this then the likely prioritiser will be 'work, urgent'. This seems a natural thing to do until you realise it neglects say long-term strategy and one's personal health.
2. How do you stay proactive rather than just reactive? The ping of e-mail and the pull of the social media interface can encourage a 'just-about-keeping-up' feeling. How do you stop, think and make choices based upon your true priorities (see 1).
3. How do you anticipate? How do you avoid being caught out by the conference which is suddenly next week or by competitive activity which must have been happening for months?
4. How do you prepare big/chunky/daunting tasks for preparation? Small, easy tasks do get done. Cups of coffee do get made. But the new expenses policy is not getting written. How does any task become brain and time friendly?
5. How do you get the best of your greatest asset, thinking time?
6. How do you avoid simple overload?
7. How do you boost your creativity?

Some simple suggestions tomorrow.