Progression Never Ends | The Home of Chris Eden

It’s been a while since I last posted. Why I hear you ask? Primarily because i’ve been super stacked working at a manic media agency since making the move over to Australia, coupled with the fact that there’s a lot more to do out here in your spare time.

In the sheer manicness of the new job i’ve found myself increasingly reading productivity and management blogs to try to figure out where it’s all going wrong.

Some of these concepts and ideas have really stuck so I thought i’d share them with anyone else that may be interested.

Here’s my top 10…

1. Plan your day on a post-it note

This is one of my favourites. Basically the idea here is that your working day can only fit so much in. If you write out your most important tasks out and then limit the top (probably around 5 of them) down for the day then your day is full. If something comes up something has to get bumped off the post-it.

When you get to the end of the day you can screw up your post it note and toss it at the person that has annoyed you the most as your stroll out of the office, safe in the knowledge that the list, and therefore your working day ,has been done completed. It’s rather satisfying. Failing that you could just plan your time in your calendar. Boring.

2. Use a task management app

For the more geeky or you this is a task management app such as remember the milk or Toodledo can be really very helpful. Additionally, they also work well with the GTD way of thinking.

Most of the good ones will allow you to organise your tasks by due date, client, admin and also sync between all your gadgets. iPhone, iPad and PC. This way your ‘to do’ list is never far away and you don’t have to update it in mutiple places. This also means that you can setup alerts across all platforms which will buzz you when you’re near the due date/time of a task.

I also find these particularly useful when trying to fill in the pointless time sheets at the end of the week, whilst everyone else if racking their brains trying to figure where yet another blur of a week has gone you can simply view your completed tasks.

3. Do your most creative work when you’re at your most creative

Following the MIT theory, don’t ask me where this came from I read it somewhere, Most Important Things first means that instead of getting in first thing when your brain is firing on all cylinders you don’t waste this valuable period of concentration on trawling emails and getting super stressed putting out fires.

Chances are if something is mega urgent, heaven forbid someone may have died, or in media it’s more likely that an ad hasn’t gone out or someone’s not completed their time sheets, then there’s every chance that person may phone you, or even come and speak to you in person.

Based on the previous day’s planning you probably already know what your key priorities are for that day, if you don’t shame on you for not being busy enough or just too dam productive. Knock out your biggest tasks of the day first things and use the backend of your day to complete quick tasks which require less thought and being to plan your following day.

4. Question the value of the 3 biggest distractions

EMAIL
SOCIAL MEDIA
MEETINGS

Simply put the 3 biggest distractions at work are email, meetings and social media. Compared to my last agency i’ve found social media has been the first to be axed in this new job, hence my tweets and posts on here have been few and far between.

All three of these distractions deserve their own pieces so I won’t try to offer advice within this post on how t manage them. The question we need to ask is do we need to send that email? Have a whole hour long meeting? Check FB every 10 mins?

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