After 2020 you’ve earned your juggler badge. Working remotely while also home-schooling, taking care of your kids and household work hasn’t been easy. But, if urgencies are a thing in all fields, the public sector is the winner. As civil servants, we are constantly putting out fires. There’s hardly time to plan or to think. Everything needs to be done yesterday! There is always something urgent. The current circumstances have exacerbated that even more.
In this article, I share three tricks to increase your productivity and regain your motivation. To complement this blog, I’ve created a step-by-step guide for actions you can start taking today (download it here).
1. Set your weekly and daily priorities
I know, I know. You might be thinking the problem is not that I don’t have my priorities clear, it’s just that I don’t have enough time. I get it, I’ve felt the same way.
Let’s think for a moment about time as you would think about another scarce resource, money.
A country’s budget, for example, reflects the government’s priorities. Budget allocation is an exercise to decide what are the projects that will get resources in a particular time frame. Something similar happens with our time. We have to prioritize given that there are only 24 hours a day. The problem is that we aren’t always as intentional about how we spend our time.
I’ve found that the more intentional you are at allocating your time, the more effective you are at your work. Start by planning your week and writing down the things you need to get done. I don’t always do it, but when I do it makes a difference. Downloading your intentions from your mind onto paper can be powerful. Once you have your weekly priorities, use that to guide your daily activities. I like to plan my next day the night before. It helps me to reduce the anxiety of having too many things to do.
My favorite part is crossing over what I’ve done. The feeling of accomplishment increases your motivation, too.
Replace your endless to-do list
A change that I’ve recently implemented and has worked out really well for me is Michael Hyatt’s big three. The idea is that you identify the three ‘big things’ you’ll do that week or day. When I first heard of it, it sounded impossible to reduce my list to only three, I had a lot more. However, in essence, this strategy forces you to prioritize the three most important things on your to-do list. Which is why it is effective. Even if you don’t do anything else, you would’ve already completed the most important tasks.
(If you want to learn more about Hyatt’s methodology you can download my notes from his book here).
2. Block-out space to work
You need some time to work alone. No meetings, no interruptions AND no distractions. Yes, this includes your phone and social media. The only way to get things done is to have time to focus.
Different things have worked for me at different stages. When I worked at the President’s office that was late at night. As a Minister, the best time was between 4 and 7 am. It wasn’t ideal, but it allowed me to have some time to get things done before even getting to the office. Doing it so early also meant everyone in my team had my replies by the time they started their day. When I had to travel a lot, planes were the best place to work. As a mom, the best time is when my daughter sleeps.
Find out what works well for you and your family situation.
3. Take care of yourself, five minutes at a time
To be honest, I wasn’t very good at this, which is why I hope you can do it better. My average work-day was 16 hours and I could easily stretch it up to 20 hours when needed. As you can imagine, it isn’t great or sustainable in the long run. I wish someone had said it earlier to me, but for some reason, we don’t necessarily talk about our health as a ‘productivity tip’.
If you are thinking I don’t have time, I found something close to the ‘magic formula’ (I wish I knew about it when I was in office. I would’ve used it because it’s doable): Feel Better in Five by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend it). There are two main principles behind it:
- For change to happen you have to plan to do it at your lowest level of motivation, not at your highest. Dr. Chatterjee explains how people start exercising (particularly at this time of the year), but they don’t follow through. Furthermore, the feeling of failure impacts your overall motivation.
- A person needs to be well in their mind, body and heart. I love this idea of the person as a whole. Otherwise, we are more like robots or machines. Which, we are not. With the pandemic, talking about these issues is more important than ever.
What is this magic formula? The idea is to have five-minute ‘health snacks’. The book gives you a series of exercises to help you calm your mind, exercise your body, and strengthen your connections with others. For each of the three pillars – mind, body and heart – there are five-minute exercises to choose from. You can start with one pillar and increase it gradually to three. I found it pretty hard to say I don’t have five minutes for myself. Do you? (You can download my notes from the book here)
Final thoughts
Working in the public service is very demanding. It’s also very rewarding because you can feel very tangibly the impact you can make on people’s lives. But I’ll remind you what I always said to my team: your country needs the best version of you. You want to be productive, to do more and to make things happen: take care of yourself. We need you for the long haul.
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
