Huddle.net's Collaboration Blog

Plan your day

Posted on 08. Jan, 2010 by Jaan Orvet in Collaboration Biz, Features

We have all worked with people who seem to never really know what they are supposed to do that day. A lot of daily hair pulling, searching for not-really-sure, and even a spot of whining are the hallmarks of Mr or Ms Unorganized-Unfocused.

Useless, they are. It is because they don’t know how to prep.

To do a good job, we need to prepare. Those of you who end each day by starting something for the following workday are geniuses. That trick really does work, and you can safely skip to the next post (thank you for reading, have a lovely day).

But the rest of us? Here are five ways you can start every day off in the best possible, organized and well informed way. You can do this on your smartphone while commuting on public transport, at the coffee shop, or at your place of work.

1) Before you check your email, make a mental note of one important thing you want to accomplish that day.

2) Look at your calendar, get an understanding of whether you will have long periods of productivity that day or if you should focus mostly on quicker turn-around tasks.

3) Choose tasks from your to-do list that you will finish that day. Put that one thing from point 1 above at the top of the list.

When you arrive at your place of work…

4) Get cracking on the day’s most important task.

5) After a little while (when getting coffee, going to the loo,…) check your email.

See what just happened? You were completely in control of what to do and you started working on it. Brilliant.

What’s with the not making checking your email a priority? Other people control your inbox: anyone can send you anything and it’s usually something that would make the day better for them not you. Having other people set the tone, and schedule, of your day is demoralizing, unproductive and annoying.

If you need to check email early on, do so before you start doing actual work: on the bus, standing in line for your morning cuppa or wherever you have short periods of downtime. Either way think about how you can get your day going with as little outside interference as possible. The result might be a happier you and happier clients.

Thank you for reading, have a lovely day.

More about Jaan

Web Strategist Jaan Orvet has a passion for good user experiences and improving the way people collaborate.

He believes the way we work and the tools we use all affect our final deliverables. He wants to cut out complexity, do away with ‘extras’ and turn a blind eye to ‘feature rich’ in favour of clarity and simplicity.

Tags: productivity, Project Management