productivity++; procrastination--;

In this post I will quickly summarize what I covered in my informal talk.

• Writing is important! Whatever you do for work should have some written record, otherwise it is almost a lost cause. This also has a benefit of serving as a repository that you can refer to later to analyze your progress at work or in personal life.
• Exercise 1:
• Write down at least five goals on a sheet of paper that you want to accomplish in the next year. For example, you may want a promotion, learn some technology, lose 5 kg, or work on your public speaking skills, etc. Every day, you should be working at least a little bit on the most important goal in this list. Always carry this list with you and frequently stare at it and appraise your progress.
• As mentioned earlier, your work should come from a list of tasks, and the worst place to keep it is your mind.  You need a system! A commitment made without properly being documented in enough detail spawns an unconscious process in your brain that increases stress in a way you may not explicitly feel.
• The principle of productivity: Each task you do should come from a written, centrally located, prioritized list of concrete tasks.
• Use the four quadrant method by Stephen Covey to prioritize the tasks. His "7 habits" book is pretty outdated, but the four quadrant method is a neat way to classify your tasks, semi-projects, or projects.
• Maintain a repository of tasks, semi-projects, and projects in the written format (I use text files and keep them on Dropbox).
• Eugene Pauly was an amnesiac who suffered from anterograde amnesia (the same kind of amnesia Leonard from the film Memento and Aamir Khan's character in Ghajini had) who could not form new memories, but still, he was able to form new habits. His example demonstrates that once you form the habit of writing your day-to-day and your to-do, it will become an integral part of your life.
• Forming a habit takes effort. Your brain will have heightened activity when you are doing something that you are not used to such as when you create a list of tasks or projects for the first time. Please try to get through this.
• See the principle of productivity. You should have a written, centrally located, prioritized list of concrete tasks for each day ready by the previous night.
• You only have a limited amount of energy during the day. Think of it as a jar full of energy. Think of your important tasks as big stones, medium-importance tasks as little stones, and least important tasks as sand. If you start your day with least important tasks, that is if you fill your jar with sand, there will be no mental energy and time left to work on the important tasks, that is there will be no place for the big stones. So always work on the most-important/biggest task first thing in the day.
• For really big tasks or projects, use the Swiss cheese technique where you think of the task or the project as being 3 dimensional rather than linear and try to poke holes in it (like Swiss cheese) by doing some short actions that contribute to the task. This is in contrast to the previous point, but you use this method when the motivation to start a huge project is low.
• Another good technique is Pomodoro technique where you start a timer for 15, 20, or 25 minutes before you start working on a task, and the only thing you do during this period with single-minded focus is the task at hand and nothing else. After the allotted time is over, you take a little break.
• Some tips:
• It is okay to start with a bad effort; you will improve it in subsequent iterations.
• Keep your inbox empty. If it has 10,000+ read/unread emails, just select them all, mark as read, and archive.
• If it is consuming a lot of your time, deactivate Facebook (if you cannot delete). If that  is also too hard, you may try activating it once in 1-2 months for a week.
• Exercise or meditate. I recommend at least three times a week for at least half an hour at one time. I prefer running, but you can pick your favorite physical activity. This will really increase your productivity because you will have more energy for several hours after the exercise.
• However much knowledge you gather on productivity and however many tools you install on your smartphone, ultimately you will have to take the first step and start using them. Once you start, do not stop using your system.
• Exercises 2 and 3:
• Write down a task list for today (or tomorrow if it is past afternoon) on a sheet of paper.
• Write down a high-level task list for the week.

Hope you find this useful. Have a stress-free work day!

References:

1. Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
3. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
4. The Checklist by Atul Gawande
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
6. The Pomodoro Technique