The Fundamental Basics of a Productive Day

Podcast 364

What are the solid basics of becoming more productive that anyone can use today? That’s the question I’m answering this week. 

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Script | 364

Hello, and welcome to episode 364 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

When I was little, a police officer lived in our village. The police service provided his home, and his job was to look after the local community. Sargeant Morris was my first introduction to the police, and he taught me some valuable lessons—not least about the importance of being a law-abiding citizen. 

Yet, a lesson he taught me that I never realised how important it was until later was the power of daily routines. Each morning at 8:00 am, Sergeant Morris would walk up and down the main street in our village, ensuring that the schoolchildren got to school safely. 

He was also there when we returned from school at the end of the day. I’m sure there were days he was unable to be there, but all I remember is his presence on the street when I went and came back from school. 

He would wear his hi-viz jacket, chat with the parents and children, and make sure we crossed the road at the pedestrian crossing and that the traffic didn’t drive too fast down the street. 

I also remember because of his presence, seemingly day and night, crime was almost non-existent in our village. 

It was the simple things—things that did not require a lot of effort or knowledge—that made Sergeant Morris a part of my childhood I will never forget. 

And that is the same for you and me today. It’s the little things repeated that make the biggest difference to our productivity. 

And so, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl. What would you say are the basics of becoming more productive? 

Hi Mike, thank you for your question.

It’s funny you’ve asked this question as it’s something I have been thinking a lot about recently. What are the absolute basics of being productive?

I would first start with something I wrote extensively about in Your Time, Your Way, and those are the three foundations: 

Sleep, exercise, and diet. 

How do you feel when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep? Perhaps you only get two or three hours of sleep. How does your day go? 

Probably not very well at all. You may be able to get through the morning, but when the afternoon comes around, you’re going to slump. 

If that poor sleep continues for a few days, and you’re going to get sick. 

Now let’s flip that. How do you feel when you get a solid night’s sleep? What does that do to your productivity? 

The difference between the two is huge. On the days you get enough sleep, you’ll focus better and for longer. You’ll make less mistakes and, something rarely talked about, you’ll make better decisions. 

That helps you as it ensures that when you decide what to work on next it will more likely be the right thing. When you’re sleep deprived, your decision making abilities sink. You’ll pick up the easy, low-value tasks—because you feel you’re doing something—but it will have little value and the important work will be left until another day. 

And then you have a backlog of important stuff to do, stuff that’s probably going To have deadlines which means you put yourself under pressure and a low level of anxiety sets in, distracting you and leaving you feeling exhausted at the end of the day. 

Exercise, or as I prefer to call it “movement” is another of those simple productivity enhancers often overlooked. 

Sitting at a table staring at a screen all day is not good for you. You know that don’t you? You’re a living, breathing organism that was designed to move.

We know that exercise, and when I say exercise I don’t mean going to a gym or out for a run, I mean some walking, chores around the house or some light stretching in your home or office, helps your thinking and creativity. It also helps to reduce stress and resets your brain after a hard session of focused work. 

One of the best things you can do if you’re working from home is to do some of your chores in-between sessions of sit-down work. 

For example, do two hours of project work, then stop, and take your laundry to the washing machine or vacuum your living room. Then sit down and do another session of deep work. 

You’ll be amazed at how much work you get done with that little tip. 

You don’t need to buy expensive standing desks. Just make sure you get up every ninety-minutes to two hours and walk around. Make the bed, tidy up the kids’ toys, wash the dishes, or water your plants. 

Firstly you’re getting away from the screen and secondly you’re stirring your energy tanks, elevating your blood flow and engaging your lymph glands, which work to clear your body of harmful bacteria and toxins—which build up alarmingly if you’re not moving. 

But the most important part of that movement is it resets your brain so you come back to your work refreshed and focused. 

And then there is diet. 

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how you feel after your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. You eat all that food, then sit down on the sofa and within a few minutes you’re falling asleep. 

All those carbohydrates causes your pancreas to go into overdrive producing vast amounts of insulin which in the short term (say twenty-minutes) is a good thing. It’s what comes next that depresses your energy levels—what we call the afternoon slump. 

Yet it can be avoided if you keep the carbs to a minimum and choose a healthier option. 

The Japanese have a wonderful eating culture called “Hara hachi bu” which translates to “eat until 80% full”. By not over-eating, the Japanese have learned that their energy levels remain reasonably consistent throughout the day, and of course another benefit is you are less likely to gain weight. 

And while we’re on the topic of food, I’m not a fan of pre-preparing your meals for the week. You may think this saves you time, but the act of cooking each evening is a great way to give you some movement, and take your mind away from the work you left behind. 

That meal break is a great way to reset your brain and if you’re doing it in the evening, you can use it to draw a line under your work for the day and prepare you for family or friends time. 

So, Mike, if I was asked to give advice on how to improve productivity, those three things would be first piece of advice. Get these three things right, and your productivity will improve massively. 

Yet, there are a few other little things you could do, all of which are simple and anyone can do.

The first would be to plan the day the day before. In other words before you finish your work day, you stop for five to ten minutes and decide what the most important things you need to do tomorrow are. 

We’re not talking about reviewing all your projects and going through all your tasks on your to-do list. 

If you’re reasonably engaged with your work, you will know what’s important. Write these down somewhere where you will see them when you start the next day and start with the item at the top of your list. 

You can do this digitally or use a pen and piece of paper. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the list is short—no more than five or six things and that it’s the first thing you see when you start your day. 

This does three things for you. The first is it prevents you from procrastinating by giving you a list of tasks to get on with that need to be done. It also avoids you wasting your most focused time trying to decide what to work on and then getting pulled into other people’s urgencies and emergencies. 

Thirdly, it allows your subconscious brain to do what it’s good at—mixing your education and experience together to come up with the most effective way to do something. 

There is also the fourth benefit, which is you will find you relax more in the evening knowing there’s not likely to be any unwelcome emergencies when you begin the day. 

Another one I’ve found helpful is to protect time each day for your communications. Now, this one comes from my life-long love of history—particularly 20th century history. 

When I read about some the 20th century’s most iconic people, whether that be Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Agatha Christie, General Eisenhower or Charles De Gaulle, you’’ find that we know so much about what they thought and felt about things because they wrote letters. 

It was a habit in the early to mid 20th century for people to spend some time each day writing letters. It’s true they didn’t have the distractions we have today—no TV (or very limited channels), internet or social media so there was time to write. 

Today, we don’t protect time for communications, and that’s lead to overwhelming backlogs of emails and messages to respond to. If you were to protect some time each day for your communications, while you may not be able to eliminate your message backlog entirely, you will prevent it from growing out of control. 

And we don’t want to be fooling ourselves in to believing people received less communications in those days. That’s not true. They received more. There were telegrams arriving where a telegram boy would wait for you to read the message and then take your reply back to the telegram office. 

And on top of that, we had to handwrite our responses, put the letter in an envelope, stick a stamp on it and take it to the post box. It was far more time consuming, yet people did it without complaint. 

Sp there you go, Mike. I hope that has given you some ideas. I would strongly recommend focusing on your sleep, movement and diet—it’s there where you’ll find some quick results. The daily planning, and protecting time for communications and admin, will give you results, but will take a little longer to feel the benefits.

Thank you for your question and thank you to your too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.