Keys to Productivity

One of the first things people will tell you (and yes, it’s those ephemeral “people”) is that the simplest way to increase your productivity is to get up an hour early. From the basic math standpoint, I can see where they’re going with that. You get up an hour early you have an extra hour of useful time in your day.

BUT….

In my case, being up that hour early typically leads to less productivity because I am so stinkin’ tired by mid-afternoon that I don’t get anything done after, say, 3p.m. So whereas I might have otherwise been reasonably productive until 8 or 9 at night, getting up at 5:30 has me falling into a zombie-like shuffle around dinner time.

For me, the key to productivity is list making. I spend 5-10 minutes each morning writing out what I would like to get accomplished that day (usually I try to keep it under 10 things). Then I make sure I have a list of any appointments or scheduled activities for the day. I prioritize the to-do list and mentally pencil them into time slots around the activities (for example, today my older son has a swimming lesson at 10:30. I know he’ll get up around 7. So getting him breakfast etc. will take an hour-ish. Then we have to get ready and all that, but there’s definitely time to get the laundry sorted and a load in the machine before we go. I can also probably get at least one toilet cleaned. And by putting the little tasks in small blocks of interrupted time (time when the kids are up and running about is interrupted time, don’t let anyone tell you differently) I save my uninterrupted time for writing.)

Doing this I can usually (pretty easily) get the stuff around the house taken care of, feel like I’m a reasonably attentive mom who plays with her kids, and still get 2-3K words dropped into my current WIP. All while still, normally, getting the sleep I need to not be grumpy.

Of course there has to be a caveat. Since the baby is teething, he got me up at 4:30. And this post is brought to you by that extra hour of not sleeping. (But I can already feel the Zombie-like stupor clawing at my eyeballs.)