Productivity Takes Practice

Michael Sliwinski's upcoming "10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity" book

I'm excited to be one of about 100 people on the launch team offering suggestions and real-life examples related to productivity for Michael Sliwinski's upcoming publication of 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity.  The launch preparation includes team challenges sharing real experiences related to productivity, and I decided to post an article related to the first challenge here on my Train Your Customers blog.

​The challenge is to write something related to the topic of the current chapter we are reviewing within the group, which for this week, has to do with productivity myths.

My own myth was that I believed that I just needed the right tool or process. I could get things done - and not feel overwhelmed - if I just had the right system.

"It’s hard even for a naturally organized person not to get lost without a good productivity system." #10stepsbook

I read an earlier edition of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) back in 2006 around the time I first started doing freelance projects. I had already dabbled with a number of different productivity approaches - both analog and digital. Something clicked when I read this book, but I definitely didn't implement everything overnight. At that time, my children were still quite young, and some days it felt like a win just to get dinner prepared and the dishes washed.  

I forgot about GTD for awhile, but every time I started feeling especially overwhelmed, I came back to the practice of emptying my head and thinking through the next steps for each of the goals I hoped to accomplish.

As my freelance career expanded, I found that I had to get very good at project management because I often juggled up to 7 or 8 direct client and subcontracting projects in different phases at once. I used a few different digital tools to help me stay on top of things, and even started and stopped with Nozbe a few times before coming to the regular practice I have now (which still has lots of room for improvement!).

​The truth is, that for me, no matter how I set up the tools that help me keep on top of my projects, I sometimes found myself using my to-do-list as a way to keep me occupied on tasks that needed to be done, without making progress on my bigger personal goals, especially when they don't have an immediate economic payoff. This is why I still don't have a finished novel (although I do have a memoir ready to be published!). And why I have a number of ideas for business-related books and/or courses yet to complete. You can even see this mentality in my current project lists. Is the color coding a subconscious message? The top projects (in green or gold) are client projects that make money more or less immediately. Those tasks get done. The tasks for personal goal projects (especially those in pink, purple or blue) are more likely to languish in those projects for weeks or even months without making any progress. 

I still have to work on my implementation of productivity practices every day and every week, refreshing, refining, and adding to how I approach what I want and need to do. The system and the tool aren't enough, and even though the principles behind GTD are simple, the implementation takes (a little) time and practice. 

One of those personal projects that's been on the back burner is my new blog (in addition to this one - Train Your Customers isn't going away anytime soon). I'm taking this challenge as the opportunity to get it going, even though I plan to start publishing posts on a temporary Weebly site before the new blog finds its permanent home probably early in 2018. 

I'll add the link here once I have it published, but the plan is to have regular posts on ways to use my favorite digital tools like Nozbe, Evernote, Toggl, Google Calendar and more to implement your own productivity practices. I've been wanting to do this since I finished the Evernote Certified Consultant training back in May, along with offering one-on-one coaching in Nozbe and Evernote. I'm calling the blog Michele's Productivity Practices. I hope to see you there soon!