Since we are connected 24 hours a day, we are in a culture where we must always be proactive and in action. We hear success stories of people who say they worked for four years, 80 hours a week, without taking a vacation. Social networks also fuel the phenomenon. We then become a little uncomfortable admitting that we took a day off. It has sneakily settled into our “always do more” society. Our societal environment encourages it. But the first thing is to become aware of it. To say to yourself: “Oops, I missed it, my work took over, I didn’t stick to my sleep schedule. » The environment places demands on us, but we often accept them, because we have difficulty saying no, refusing mandates.
No matter what tools we have, no matter our personality, no matter our work context, I have noticed that we all forget simple principles. For example, the actual time it takes to complete a task. We set aside an hour for a task and, finally, after an hour, we haven’t completed it. One of the reasons is that we plan our time according to the ideal scenario. We forget that we may need to send an email to a colleague because some information is missing, that we may have an urgent need to go to the bathroom, and then Perhaps we will meet a colleague along the way, the computer will have a problem or we will be more tired. We cannot predict the unexpected, but we know that there will be some.
No, it’s the opposite. Even if there is a task that doesn’t really require cognitive resources, like sweeping while listening to a podcast, there will always be a time when I will be more attentive to one task or the other. In the context of work, this is counterproductive. Take alternating tasks, like writing a report while responding to emails. Just stepping away from writing the report to respond to an email and then getting back to it wastes time and energy. Studies have shown it. People who do this alternation take more time to complete the main task. It’s counterproductive, but also counterintuitive, because we have the impression that when we do several things at the same time, we advance several issues. In reality, we do everything half-heartedly.
Managing your email box is a good start. Finding information through all the emails takes a lot of time. There should be a maximum of 20 emails in an inbox. When I receive a document, it’s automatic, I file it in a folder where it will be easy to find.
Dealing with emails is a small task that requires little time and provides instant gratification. Our brains are wired to love instant gratification. Regarding heavy and long tasks, I discovered a trick against procrastination which helped me a lot to get into action and which provides precisely this gratification. We take a large recurring task and subdivide it into subtasks. It really takes away a big cognitive load. To write my speech therapy reports, I made a roadmap with my 75 steps to check off once completed. I start with steps that are softer, like filling in the headers of a document, and, slowly, I manage to do what requires more brain juice. I am entering “momentum”.
Before opting for this first solution, I recommend four steps: dissect what needs to be done in order to see where it fits; standardize the process by writing down the recipe; automate everything you can with sometimes free software; delegate to another person. We can also choose to delegate because we are not specialized in the task and it will take us more time to complete it. I, for example, don’t excel at layout and design. When I get to this stage, I delegate it. If I don’t really need a nice visual, I stick to a Word document and that’s it.