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Barrier Busting
The Barrier Busting podcast offers insights, strategies, and inspiring stories that explore practical tips and powerful tools for unlocking our full potential.
Barrier Busting
Mastering Productivity: Energy, Time Audits, and List Making Strategies
Looking for ways to navigate the complexities of time management? Uncover the secrets behind mastering your mental resources and optimizing productivity with insights from this episode of the Barrier Busting Podcast. Join Matt Brooks as he dissects the true power of understanding personal energy patterns and the art of conducting energy and time audits. Discover why those pesky low-value tasks could be sabotaging your efficiency and learn how to prevent them from snowballing into major productivity roadblocks.
Imagine your day like a stand-up comedy routine: well-crafted, smooth, and engaging. That's the magic of list making in action. Explore how the Eisenhower Matrix can transform your task management, helping you prioritize effectively and maintain focus on what truly matters. I'll share my personal strategy of maintaining three dynamic lists to keep everything in check, plus some of my favorite tips on anticipating task durations, planning your next day every evening, and the importance of taking those essential brain breaks.
Picture your mind as a cluttered closet—it's time to declutter and prune. By eliminating non-essential tasks and creating an efficient workspace, you can free up mental real estate and minimize distractions. Embrace the power of technology to automate and streamline your workflow, but remember to manage those device distractions with boundaries. Don't forget the importance of buffers and breaks to handle life's unpredictability, keeping you productive and on the move.
Are you feeling stuck? Is something holding you back? Are there obstacles in your way? Well, let's smash through those obstacles so that you can live your best life. Hi, I'm Matt Brooks, founder of Matt Brooks Coaching, and I'm fascinated with how people overcome barriers and achieve success. Join me for insights, strategies and inspiring stories as we explore practical tips and powerful tools to unlock your full potential. This is the Barrier Busting Podcast. All right, hello, welcome back everyone. I'm Matt Brooks and welcome to the Barrier Busting Podcast.
Speaker 1:This is part two of my discussion about time management skills. If you listened last week, you heard me discuss this from more of a philosophical kind of perspective than a particular task or practical perspective. I talked about how important time management is, not just for productivity, but for stress reduction and overall physical and mental health. So if you didn't hear that podcast, you might want to go back and check it out. I also talked about how important it is to tailor-make your own system, that there's a lot of information out on the internet about how to manage your time, how to create great systems for time management, but the fact of the matter is it's generic information. It's all good, all stuff that should be considered, but that you really need to tailor, make it to you. And how do you do that? You first have to know yourself. You have to know your circadian rhythm. What does your body clock work like? When are you energetic and when are you not energetic? What's the best time of day for you to get the most high value tasks done and what's the worst time of day to do that? So I recommended doing an energy audit and a time audit, both things you can learn about if you didn't hear last week's episode by going back and checking it out. They're both really important in terms of helping you figure out how to use your time best.
Speaker 1:I also talked about not discrediting low-value tasks. We often do that. We think about the tasks that are really important to us, the ones that will really bring us the most value, but it's those low-value tasks that can really get in the way if we let them build up over time. So that's something I think we've got to think about when we're trying to think about how to be the most productive, when to get those low-value tasks done, so that they're out of the way, they don't build up and create more problems for us going forward. Low-value tasks, just to be clear are those things you look at, and when you look at them, you say, oh, that can wait, that can wait, that's a low-value task. All right, these can be things both at home and at work, okay, so emails that you need to respond to, but aren't really that important. Or, you know, washing the curtains in your bedroom or something that's going to take a little bit of time, that's not really that important, but that you know, if you let things like that build up, you're going to have a problem. So I suggested do those things during your low energy periods or on your off days, days where nothing's working, and we all have days like that too. So let's pick it up from there and continue with some more methods for improving your time management skills.
Speaker 1:The first thing I want to talk about is your systems. This is really important. What your systems are, are they sound, are they in place, are they good? Are they solid right Now?
Speaker 1:In one of my prior podcasts, I was talking about habits and I quoted James Clear, who wrote a book called Atomic Habits, by saying, quote we don't rise to our goals, we fall to our systems. It's our systems that are the support we need to succeed at anything but, in particular, time management, and by systems I mean not just what systems are in place for completing our tasks, but what our system of time management is itself. This part speaks to something known as ego depletion theory. I know I'm getting heavy with the theories again. Ego depletion theory, okay, but what that is is. It states that self-control or willpower draws upon conscious mental resources that can be taxed to exhaustion when in constant use with no reprieve. That's what ego depletion theory is okay. And just like our basal ganglia, that part of our brain that records our behaviors and makes them automatic, so that our brain is not overloaded, we need systems in place to fend off mental exhaustion. If we rely on our willpower alone, we will most undoubtedly fail because our mental reserves will quickly be used up and our brains are just going to shut down from exhaustion. This is precisely why systems are so important. So here's some practical tips to improve our systems and improve how productive we are with our time.
Speaker 1:Thing number one, which is, I think, the most critical, is lists Making lists, becoming really good at making lists, if you ask me. It's all about this. Lists keep us focused and driven and they make us think If you don't write it down and in a way that makes sense, it ain't going to happen. It's just not going to happen, or at least it won't happen in any kind of efficient manner. Just not going to happen, or at least it won't happen in any kind of efficient manner. I have spent decades experimenting with list making and I continue to adapt and improve it, although I gotta say I think I do have it finally down pretty good To me. I look at list making as an art form. It takes both creativity and practice. A comedian, a famous comedian, for instance, will spend months, months if not years, working on just a couple minutes of material until it's perfected. They play small clubs to work those things out, and they do this for a long time before they make their HBO stand-up special. I like to take the same approach to my lists Now.
Speaker 1:List making is also about deciding on priorities, and not just high priorities, but where all your tasks rank, because I said in my last episode, those low value tasks should not be ignored. So you need to decide what needs to be done now, what can wait and what is a complete waste of your time and should just simply be forgotten or just discarded. Now there's a great system for this. If you need help figuring this out, it's called the Eisenhower Matrix. You can check this out online. Just Google it, it'll pop right up. But it's great. And there's other systems too, but I like this one the most. All right, this was a system that was used by none other than Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and the man who, as a five-star general, served as supreme commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II. He's the guy that planned the D-Day invasion. He did a lot of amazing things in his life. He was a pretty impressive dude and he did not get where he got in life by being inefficient with his time. He had superb time management skills and the system he had in place worked brilliantly for him.
Speaker 1:Utilizing the Eisenhower matrix, you simply assign your tasks and activities to one of four classifications. Here they are Important and urgent, important and not urgent, not important and urgent, not important and not urgent. The first important and urgent should be obvious. Those are the things we have to get done Right now. They're really critical. We got to get them done Now. Important and non-urgent are tasks that need to get done, but not necessarily today or in the immediate future. There are things or projects we got to do, but there's not a deadline of three days from now. We have time to get them done, but they're still really important. Non-important and urgent are tasks that you should delegate and, by the way, learning to delegate is a key factor in successful time management. This is knowing what to give to other people or to technology to do for you Delegate. As for the final category not important and not urgent these are things that should just be ditched, just delete them, just get rid of them. And not urgent these are things that should just be ditched, just delete them, just get rid of them. These hamper your time and cloud your focus. Just get rid of them.
Speaker 1:Now, I believe these four categories create a perfect basis for your daily and general to-do lists, but here's how I do it. I do it slightly different, but the same kind of idea. Okay, I keep three separate lists One that I write out every night for the next day. I plan the next day every night. One that's a list of things that I'd like to get done soon, but that are mostly simpler, low-value tasks. And I keep a third list that is more general things I need to get done, some of which could be high-value tasks or more involved projects, but that don't need to be done in the immediate future. For the record, I'm changing these lists often, I'm always updating them, I read them all the time, and I keep updating and adapting them and changing them around, so none of this is set in stone. Every night, at some point during the evening, I plan out my next day. Now I don't use a planner or a template for this, but there are certainly plenty of those out there. If you wish For me, I just use a legal pad.
Speaker 1:Or these days, I use an e-ink notebook with a legal pad template. Each space on that pad represents a half an hour, and so I will estimate how much time each task takes and put it down accordingly. So, say, a task might take an hour and a half. I'll write the task on the first line and then an arrow through the next two, and one thing I make sure to always do is I always overestimate the time a task will take, at least by a little. I want to create buffers in my schedule for unexpected things that come up and, frankly, some brain breaks. What I mean by that is if it's something where if I bust my butt will only take me 40 minutes. I'll plan a full hour. All right, that way, if I finish early, I either have more free time or more time to get side tasks done, or I'll just keep going down my list and get everything. I either have more free time or more time to get side tasks done. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Now, on a second page I keep my general to-do list. This is on a separate page. These are the things I need to get done, but that don't need to be done immediately. I can add those things to my daily list as time permits and going forward. But back to the first page, the one where I list my daily tasks. On this page I also make a thin column on the right, the right-hand side of the page. That column lists simpler, low-value tasks and things that I need to do sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1:Now, the reason I do this in this way is so that if free time opens up during my day, I just glance over and choose something I can get done in that free time. But also seeing that on the page all the time keeps me on track with all those smaller yet annoying, time-consuming tasks that can get in the way of accomplishing bigger goals. If I procrastinate too much, they're not going to get done. So having them on the page where I can see it all the time helps me not procrastinate, and I will also include on that side list important things that I need to get done in the very near future, you know, like something that needs to be done in the following week, for instance. I also have to say that this has been a long process of experimentation for me.
Speaker 1:I can see, because I make these lists. I can see at the end of each day what was checked off and what didn't get done, what was completed and what I didn't have enough time allocated for. This allows me to constantly reevaluate my approach, and that's really important in all of this. This system has really kept me on track and it forces me to really think about it every day. By doing it this way, I take nothing for granted. I don't trust my brain to remember. I write everything down. My brain to remember, I write everything down and I mean everything. I hope this gives you a few ideas about how to improve your list-making system. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to talk about several other techniques for improving your time management, for improving your time management, feeling overwhelmed, struggling to find balance in your daily life?
Speaker 2:At Matt Brooks Coaching, we get it and we can help. With over 25 years of nonprofit executive experience and an MSW with a clinical focus, matt Brooks offers personalized coaching designed to help you rise above your challenges and live your best life. Whether you aim to advance your career, enhance your skills or simply find more clarity and peace, matt is here to be your partner and ally. Visit mattbrookscoachingcom to book your free discovery session today. Take the first step towards a brighter tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Okay. So the next thing in terms of developing great time management skills is something that I think can actually be really fun. I call it declutter and prune. Right, this goes to the fourth part of the Eisenhower matrix, the part where not important and not urgent tasks are things that should just be ditched or deleted. Okay, now, when looking at various things you've got on your to-do list, ask yourself is this vital? If not, it might be something that you can just forget about. Right? I mean, there are non-vital things that do need to get done. But try to prune away the metaphorical dead branches on your to-do list. Get them out of your way. They're just cluttering up your brain and they're going to clutter up your time. So declutter them, just like you would say, you know, declutter a closet of old clothes. Free up some space. Another thing you can do is create and this is also really important, I think create an efficient workspace and an efficient set of systems, your workspace.
Speaker 1:Think about what your workspace is like. All right, it's got to be a place that's designed to put you in the right headspace for you to fully succeed, but it also needs to be rid of distractions. Get rid of unnecessary distractions. Make that space about focus. Clean off your desk and set it up in a way that works best for you. Make the space itself a place that inspires you to be productive. Also, make sure that your scheduling, your filing, your organizational systems are all efficient and automate whatever you can. The less your brain needs to think about the better, the less you'll forget and the less you'll be tempted to put off things to another time. You know we're living now in a time of technology. That's just astounding. I mean, there's so much out there that will automate our tasks for us, that will simplify our life. These are things we should think about.
Speaker 1:I mean, in my own practice, for instance, I do several things that are automated. Okay, a simple one is automated appointment reminders. Somebody has an appointment with me. They're going to get an email a day before that, 24 hours before that appointment. That's automated. I don't have to think about it. If someone makes an appointment with me, I also have Zoom integrated into my practice software so that the minute an appointment is made, it'll immediately generate a Zoom meeting. I don't even have to think about that. I don't have to do anything, I can just let it go. My brain doesn't need to be weighed down by all that stuff. So, you know, use the technology that we have today to automate as much as you can in your systems. You're going to be grateful you did.
Speaker 1:Another thing, if possible, is minimize, if not eradicate, distractions that come from your devices your phone, your iPad, your computer. Man, those devices can be devious this way. They are designed to distract us, they are designed to draw our attention to them. But if we're going to be productive, you got to find ways to not, you know, be tempted. Okay. So where do we find those ways?
Speaker 1:Primarily for me is in notifications. Do we find those ways? Primarily for me, is in notifications. I literally don't allow sounds or banners into my life at all, with the exception of a couple of things. So you know, I have a banner that'll flash across if it's my ring doorbell, if it's a text message, but otherwise I will set so for my emails, for instance, instead of having a banner come across the top of my screen every time an email comes in, I just have the badges set up. I use Apple products, so I have the badges set up, so I'll notice a little red circle on my email icon that tells me I have emails. I can check that later, but I don't have things popping on my screen. I try to just get rid of anything that's just going to pop up at any moment on my screen. In fact, it's one of the reasons I purchased an E-Ink notebook.
Speaker 1:The one I have is the Remarkable 2, and I'm real excited because I have the Remarkable Paper Pro coming on the way, but this is a device where I can email things out, but nothing can come in unless I decide to upload something to it or download something on it, so nothing distracts me. There's no notifications. It really is what they market it as, as a thinking device. So it's perfect for me because it just gets me away from anything that's going to distract me, all right. More over than just that, though, you got to set some boundaries with these devices. You got to limit the time you spend checking emails and messages and social media I'm talking about. If you're going to be productive, you just got to do this, all right. So one good approach to this is to set specific times during the day for checking emails or checking your messages or checking your social media. I know this is really hard to actually pull off, but at least, if you can be aware of not letting those distractions into your life. If you can somehow push them away, you're going to do better. They're going to rob you of your time and your focus. As I tell my son, it's a machine, not a person. Don't allow it to control you. You control it All right.
Speaker 1:Next up, I want to talk a little bit about buffers and brakes. This is being ready for shit to go wrong. It's that simple. That's why we need buffers and brakes. Okay, first, use your unscheduled downtime. What do I mean by that Unscheduled downtime? Well, things happen that will force you to be sitting around waiting or not able to use your time the way you would like to. And this is one of the reasons, by the way, I love cloud services because everything I need is on my phone or my iPad or my laptop everything. So if I have unscheduled downtime and I have one of those devices with me, I can still get stuff done, all right.
Speaker 1:This is for those times where you are kind of held hostage by a situation that you did not prepare for. You know, you get a call from the school, your kid's sick, you got to go pick him up and take him to the doctor's office and you're sitting in a waiting room wasting time in your day. You're not wasting it because you're taking care of your kid, of course, but you're not being productive at your desk. You can still get a few things done while you're sitting in that waiting room If you have a device with you that has a cloud service. And there's other ways to do that too if you just keep things in a briefcase that you can tag along with you. But it's why I love the cloud services.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's say, your basement floods and you need to stay home for the day, but you spend most of that day just sitting around waiting for the insurance company to show up or for the workers to finish the work they're doing. You're literally held hostage. You have to be there, but you're not at your desk. You can still get a lot done. So you know, make the most of that unscheduled downtime whenever it happens. Okay, put things in your metaphorical bag of tricks that you can get done during these times instead of just wasting valuable time, okay.
Speaker 1:Next tip schedule in breaks for your day. Don't overschedule yourself. This is a common mistake. Our eyes are too big for our stomachs when we think about time management. Don't overschedule, purposely schedule in breaks. You need to have periods of rest to recharge your brain. Plan for these, okay. If you're not giving yourself enough time to recharge your brain, plan for these, okay. If you're not giving yourself enough time to recharge your brain, that's a recipe for failure and a recipe for stress.
Speaker 1:Now, there's several techniques out there that can help you with this. One of them that I really like is something called the Pomodoro technique. Okay, this is basically you're setting up your day, uh, in 25 minute chunks. So you work for 25 minutes, then you that's uninterrupted, then you take a five minute break and then, I think, after you do that for a couple of hours I can't remember off the top of my head but then you take a 30 minute break. So it's a system that designs breaks in your day for you. You may not like that system, but read about it and take from that the concept and adapt it to your own set of circumstances, your own way of doing things.
Speaker 1:Okay, also helpful for when circumstances arise that are unavoidable are these setting times for breaks Because, like I said earlier, if you have extra time built into your day, you might have time to handle some of these unexpected things without it causing a real disruption to you. All right, most circumstances that interrupt our days are not major events. They're minor ones, right? So if you've given yourself a little wiggle room in your schedule, you'll typically have time to deal with those unavoidable circumstances without it causing, you know, a real problem for your overall productivity. But don't con yourself into thinking you're a superhero man. Schedule those breaks again. Be kind to yourself, right. Think. Think about this from an honest perspective. Don't don't set your sights too high so that they're unachievable. All that's going to do is make you feel terrible about yourself and cause more stress, and this is not going to help. All right. So set some brakes, be realistic, all right.
Speaker 1:Another thing that's really important about being effective here in time management is not worrying about perfection. This is common. You'll read about this in anything you read about time management or most things. Perfectionism is just going to weigh you down. You're going to end up being uber focused on something and, before you know it, hours have gone by when you really needed those hours to get other things done. Perfection boy, that's hard to achieve, so I wouldn't be too focused on that. Keep moving forward. That's what you should be focused on, if you ask me. One last item that relates to all this that I think we should add here is free time.
Speaker 1:What happens when you suddenly have free time? I know that doesn't happen that often, but what happens when you get ahead of your schedule and you suddenly have free time? What do you do with that time? Do you just, you know, chill? Do you do nothing? Do you just lie on the couch and watch TV? What do you do with that time? Now, sometimes that lying on the couch and watching TV is really important. You need that rest.
Speaker 1:But for me, more often than not, when I have free time like that, I like to look at my schedule for the upcoming. I might look three months down the road and see what's coming up, and I might use some of that free time to work on something that I don't have to complete for a couple of months. So in my old line of work I would give speeches and lectures a lot, right. So if I had a free afternoon in September and I'm looking at my calendar and I see that in December I've got to give a speech, I might take some of that free time and start working on that speech. Get some of it done. I'm not talking about writing the speech that day, but I might do some research or I might gather information, or I might sketch out what I'm going to do, work out a few things. That's what I like to do, because what's great about doing it that way, what's great about utilizing free time to sort of do advanced work for your life, is that at some point you're going to get ahead of yourself, and when you get ahead of yourself, you know what happens. You have a lot more free time. You're on the golf course more, which is what I was doing. So you get ahead if you use that free time. Don't let free time completely go to waste. If you're going to just chill out or if you're going to waste that free time, make sure it's a conscious decision. Think it through, because that time could really be valuable in the long run.
Speaker 1:All right, the last area I want to talk about in terms of time management is stress and your health. Okay, if you're looking to improve your time management, productivity in general, we can't avoid talking about physical health, diet, stress management. I know you don't want to hear it. We hear it all the time but, frankly, to be efficient, you need your brain and your body to be efficient. You need energy to focus. You need this stuff. So you already know this. But you can boost your energy levels with a healthy diet and exercise. Okay, if nothing else, you'll find you'll sleep better, and that alone makes a huge difference, because I'm sure you're like me If, say, you had a night where something woke you up in the middle of the night, you couldn't get back to sleep, you didn't get adequate sleep.
Speaker 1:You're a mess the next day. You're not really effective at anything. So, eat right, exercise. These things go a long way in, at the very least, managing stress. All right, and we're going to have stress. We already know that Stress is a part of our lives.
Speaker 1:My question is how debilitating is that stress for you? What is the effect on not just your productivity but your relationships at work and home? I'm going to do some episodes on stress management in the near future, but for now, please just pay attention to your stress levels and seek help if it's becoming a hindrance to you. It's amazing how many things stress will affect. Keep an eye out for it and do what you can to minimize it. Part of doing what you can is to eat a good diet, regularly exercise. Those are powerful tools for managing stress. Be good to yourself and you'll be surprised with the results.
Speaker 1:My final thought for the day is if you're really committed to improving your time management skills, what I've shared here, along with many other tools that you can find on the internet, should be a huge help to you. However, at the end of the day, you're going to have to challenge yourself to be disciplined. You won't always fully succeed at this, and remember when that happens, be sure to give yourself some grace. If you listen to my series on habits, I was talking about what happens if you fall off a habit for a day. It's okay, it's no big deal. One day is a blip, but missing two days in a row is the start of a new habit. So you know what? Just allow yourself the ability to screw up, but you have to accept the fact that you're going to need discipline. You won't always nail it, but in time and with discipline and willpower, you will experience tremendous growth. You will become more effective at time management and guess what you will find? You have more free time, which will all lead to a healthier and happier work-life balance, and don't we all want that we do.
Speaker 1:All right, well, that's all for today. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you being here. All right, well, that's all for today. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed it, please hit the subscribe button or the follow button so you'll know when my next episode drops. For now, be well, and I'll catch you next time on the Barrier Busting Podcast. Thank you.
