How to know if your daily routine is killing productivity

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Regularly evaluate the actions you do out of habit and filter out unnecessary ones.

A good daily routine helps you get things done with a minimum of stress, using time and energy efficiently. But it can become outdated, too harsh, or inappropriate. And if you continue to rely on it, the situation will reverse: stress will increase, and productivity will fall.

Our brains are lazy and are always trying to conserve energy. Therefore, repetitive actions from the schedule are performed on autopilot.

This becomes dangerous when the autopilot mode captures all areas of life. As a result, we all the time tend to the habitual way of thinking, the same type of actions and decisions.

In this state, we do not see new opportunities, do not come up with creative ideas, do not find the best options. Therefore, from time to time you need to get off the autopilot and evaluate how effective the daily routine is. He should save time and help achieve goals, and not vice versa. As Stephen Covey writes in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the key is to prioritize your calendar, not prioritize what's already on the calendar.

When too many repetitive tasks appear on the calendar, we stop thinking and assessing our condition.

We begin to mindlessly follow our plans, leaving no room for spontaneous decisions and self-care. In this case, it is necessary to cleanse the habits. That is, to check if any of them are undermining productivity and well-being.

The purpose of this cleaning is to reduce unnecessary repetitive steps. See which ones you do automatically. Remember that you should be in control of your schedule, not he of you. There are many small things that you can do for a whole day or a week, but at the same time, almost no progress towards the goal. Do not run them on autopilot if they do not bring the desired result.

“Autopilot is becoming more of a problem,” says Mark Williamson, head of the happiness research organization Action for Happiness. - From an evolutionary defense mechanism that protects the brain from overloading, it has turned into a basic mode of operation in which we make decisions without accountability. It seeps into all areas of life, depriving us of our sense of control."

If you feel that your daily routine is putting too much pressure on you, it's time to pause and evaluate your habits.

Ask yourself a few questions. Am I usually focused or am I distracted a lot? Why? Am I getting closer to my short and long term goals? What hinders me and what helps?

Analyze each task and action. Determine which ones can be moved, delegated, broken down, or eliminated altogether if they do not help move towards goals. Try to free up time for what really matters to you. Resist the temptation to take on as many tasks as possible and add new ones only if you really need to.

Conduct these audits regularly and you will always be focused on what matters to you. “After every cleaning, you get at least a month, during which you manage to seriously work on several projects,” writes Cal Newport in his book Digital Minimalism.

It's easy to brush it off. When you're busy, it doesn't seem to be all that important to set aside time for reflection and uprooting unnecessary tasks from your routine. But this can be a necessary reboot, after which productivity will increase. Try this once a month and you will find yourself wasting less time.