How to Have a Productive Week

In this article, I’ll talk about some general considerations that might help your productivity.

At a very high-level, to be productive on a daily basis you want to have:

• A steady stream of well-defined actionable tasks.
• Focused time to complete the tasks.

That is, during some scheduled focused time we want to be able to pick up a task with an understanding of what is required, complete it, and move on to the next. A well-defined actionable task is one where the friction involved in starting it is minimal and a criteria defining its completion are clear.

To support having a productive day it needs to be embedded in a weekly loop that refines and prioritises any captured tasks:

• Refine tasks into well-defined actionable tasks.
• Compile ordered list of tasks for the week.
• Daily loop:
  • Pick up task.
  • Complete task.
• Reflect on the week.
• Review any captured ideas.

Creating Well-Defined Actionable Tasks

A well-defined actionable task is easy to start and it is clear when the task is complete. Ask the following questions

• Can this task be started or are there dependencies?
  • Consider creating separate tasks for the dependencies.
• Is it clear what needs to be done?
  • Write a detailed description so that it is clear what is trying to be achieved and what needs to be done to complete the task. This will help you better understand the task and allow you to simply do the task when it comes to working on it.
  • Add context to the task e.g. relevant links, documents, and diagrams that will help complete the task.
• Could this task be completed in a few hours?
  • Consider splitting up into multiple smaller tasks if possible.
  • Remove or defer extraneous components.

Capturing Ideas in an Inbox

Often while working on a task unrelated thoughts and ideas will pop into your head which causes distraction to help with this an inbox can be used. An inbox is place to capture ideas, tasks, inspiration, etc for later review and organisation. Your inbox can be physical or digital anything that allows for quick input that you usually have with you, I personally use Google Keep on my phone.

Capturing ideas prevents you from forgetting them leading to you actioning more of them. Getting the thoughts out of your head and onto paper avoids open-loops, an unproductive state in which you are thinking over and over about an idea without resolution.

Inbox entries are intentionally a little rough as the point is to get the idea written down for later review.

Reflect on the Week

A look back over the week with the following questions in mind:

• What went well over the week?
• What went badly over the week?
• How could things have been improved?

Ideally, the results from these questions lead to actionable steps that incorporated into future weeks.

Improving Your Tools and Skills

Often, one of the next steps from reflecting on the week is to improve the your tools and skills.

• Deliberate practice i.e. focused structured practice that expands your knowledge or skill.
• Training courses e.g. SkillShare, Udemy, etc.
• Feedback and advice from others, often an external perspective can provide insight that you’d have a hard time coming to yourself.
• Write notes and documentation so that the same task can be completely more easily in the future.
• Automate tasks to improve speed and accuracy.

Weekly Review

Review your task list and inbox on a weekly basis to stay organised, prioritise your work, and ensure that you’re on track to achieve your larger goals.

Schedule some dedicated time to review your tasks, I schedule an hour on Sunday.

A Side Note on Productivity and Sustainability

Productivity is the amount of output per unit of time spent. For example, if you were a strawberry picker your productivity might be 1,000 strawberries per hour.

It’s important to focus on the often-overlooked time spent in the denominator as a focus purely on total output isn’t sustainable and will eventually lead to burnout. The strawberry picker might work a few extra hours every day to pick a few more strawberries leading to an accumulation of fatigue ultimately harming total output in the long run. Instead, it would be best to make improvements so that they can pick more strawberries per hour.

The goal is to increase the amount you get done in the time you’ve allotted for the task.