Can a Productivity Ritual Help You Get More Done? Image courtesy of Gualberto1070 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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This is Week 24 of a Year of Living Productively
This week I tested whether a productivity ritual (as described by Simple Productivity Blog) of preparing for each work session mentally with prayer and physically by gathering materials would help me get things done. Scroll to the bottom of last week’s post for more details.
How a Productivity Ritual Saved My Sanity This Week
- Gave me a sense of peace. I used to be careful to pray before I wrote. This week I realized I haven’t been and I haven’t enjoyed the focus and flow I used to have.
- Helped me work more efficiently. I remembered to grab my blogging notebook, for example, and was able to get more posts written in less time than I have in weeks.
How a Productivity Ritual Made Me Crazy This Week
- Not conducive to much of the week’s work. I hosted two large parties and a house guest this week. There wasn’t a simple way of “gathering materials” for this, though I made plenty of trips to the store! I’ve been going strong all day long and had rare occasions when I felt like a new work period was starting for which the ritual would be effective.
- Kept forgetting to use it. I haven’t kept the usual schedule this week and this habit hasn’t been developed, so I forgot about using it. When I did remember, I wasn’t sure how to use it for the work in front of me.
Did a Productivity Ritual Help Me Get Things Done?
Yes, when it was appropriate. When I sat down at my desk to work on my blog, I loved it! Most likely I was intuitively using this ritual as I got everything together I needed for entertaining this week. I could have benefitted from it more had I been more efficient in gathering cleaning supplies and more intentional about praying before activity changes. It’s something I want to continue to do in the future without trying to shoe-horn it into all of my work.
**UPDATE**
I still use productivity rituals to good effect. I make sure I’m comfortable, check my computer, and pray before writing.
The Productivity Approach I’ll Be Using for Week 25
This week I’ll be testing Make it Happen. Make it Happen in Ten Minutes a Day: The Simple, Revolutionary Method for Getting Things Done {affiliate link} doesn’t offer a revolutionary new approach to getting things done. Rather Lorne Holden offers motivation for getting just about anything done 10 minutes at a time.
The concept. I’ve already tested Pomodoros and found them to be beneficial. However, I was working for 50-minute periods. I already use ten-minute cleaning periods with the kids and they work. But I haven’t been using these short work periods that overcome resistance and procrastination in other areas of my life. For example, I have some paper scrapbooking kits that I keep saving for “when I have time.” You and I both know I won’t get to them with that criterion. This week, I’m going to spend ten minutes a day on them.
The other concept explained in Make it Happen that I was very excited about was making a list of things we want to create and things we want to conquer. This dichotomy really resonates with me. The labels we use for our work are very powerful. Imagine having a “to conquer” list vs. a “thankless” list. This week I want to create two scrapbook pages using a kit and I want to conquer selling things on eBay and Amazon. I already feel relieved thinking about working on this just 10 minutes a day.
If you’d like to join me this week, here’s what you do. Buy and read Make it Happen in Ten Minutes a Day {affiliate link} if you want to, but it’s not required. Choose a create and a conquer task for the week and work on them just ten minutes a day each. If you can’t afford twenty minutes a day, choose just one of these tasks to focus on.
Click here to see how my week of 10 Minutes a Day went.
You can now subscribe to productivity posts separate from the rest of Psychowith6 content here.
If you’ve tried a Productivity Ritual to increase your productivity, please comment. I will no longer be including polls.
Here are the links to the productivity hacks I’ve tried so far:
Week 16: David Seah’s 7:15AM Ritual
Week 17: Another Simple and Effective Method
Week 18: Daily/Weekly/Monthly To-Do List
Week 19: Ultimate Time Management System
Mel, I’m going to try a variation of this… I’ve got 7 somewhat big projects (well, maybe not that big, but I’m resisting all of them) that I’ve broken down 10 minute tasks to work on every day. Will report back on how it goes!
I look forward to hearing, Jacq. Are you working on all 7 every day?
Well, I was thinking that I would but Cricket has me wondering… LOL In all seriousness, she’s right, some of these things require tools and whatnot to get going and I don’t want to junk up the place with abandoned projects. I think it would work best on things that someone finds too overwhelming to start without easing into it.
But I don’t know, sometimes I just keep going once I’ve started. Sometimes not. 😉
Try keeping a set of small tools in each bathroom. One less excuse not to clean up the mess while it’s still easy, and to scrub the tub while it’s soft after your shower. I keep my mop and broom in the laundry room, but have a set of everything else where they’ll be used.
The same goes with pencils and paper by the phones, and a calendar that can be reached from the phone — very important if you want the kids to use the family calendar.
That’s from FlyLady. She has several systems that might work in under a week. Home Blessing (in an hour). Crisis cleaning (before and/or after an event). Zones (one room a week, or part of the tub each day). Commercial Cleaning (clean during commercials). Control Journals to help plan big events. (Read her Holiday journal — stress free from before Thanksgiving through the New Year.)
Ten minutes a day is amazing, as long as you don’t use it on too many projects at once. (I speak from experience. 10 minutes a day on each of seven projects is 70 minutes plus seven transitions.) I like the “create” and “conquer” division. Most of my projects this season are conquer. I create all the time, but put off polishing and filing. (The prayer shawl is beautiful, but it’s at the long boring stage, and the needles are so big and the tips are so long that the needles have to move a lot, which is hard on my hand. In danger of becoming Challenge.)