How to improve your personal efficiency
- Jürgen De Vyt
- Apr 26, 2021
- 6 min read
Personal efficiency is not about squeezing more into our limited hours but finding ways to do more with the time we have.
To achieve this, we should shift our focus on managing our energy and distractions rather than managing our time. Applying a proven strategy to get things done will help us to gain control over our workflow and reduce stress.
Always Start With Why
"All achievement, no matter what may be its nature, or its purpose, must begin with an intense, burning desire for something definite." - Napoleon Hill
Having a clear sense of purpose, your WHY, will create the engagement and motivation you need to take action most efficiently.
A good set of values will guide your decisions and determine HOW you do what you do. If your goals are congruent with your purpose and values, WHAT you do will lead to success and fulfilment.
Managing energy rather than time
Instead of optimising our time schedules, we should focus on optimising the quantity and quality of our available energy.
One strategy to do this is actually working less and take more breaks, allowing you to recharge your energy and stay productive longer.
But what is energy? According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement, there are four sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Physical: flexibility, endurance, strength.
Emotional: capacity to demonstrate a wide range of emotions appropriate to a given situation, for example, showing curiosity and restraint when faced with criticism.
Mental: ability to stay focused and disciplined, like continuing a difficult meeting when you feel like quitting.
Spiritual: staying connected to your core values, for example, avoiding to make a quick win while causing environmental damage.
Good physical energy can be developed with adequate sleep, healthy nutrition, plenty of water, exercise, rest and recovery and using minor, incremental changes to our lifestyle.
Maintaining a positive emotional energy level requires enjoyment, feeling challenged, adventure and seeing opportunities.
Mental energy can be trained by finding ways to focus on our work by adopting realistic optimism, viewing the world as is while working towards the desired outcome and keeping your eyes on the target.
Spiritual energy is derived from your commitment to others as well as ourselves and can be developed by searching beyond our immediate self-interest, attending to the needs of others.
To live at full engagement, you must find a positive and intrinsically motivating purpose.
What’s a good purpose?
A good purpose has a positive focus, meaning you strive towards something rather than to avoid something. It’s intrinsically motivating, being in line with your values or simply being fun to do and it’s also beyond self-interest, expressing your core values while improving the lives of others.
Rituals
Rituals and habits are powerful tools to effectively manage energy because depending on self-control requires too much of your resources. Rituals allow us to balance our energy expenditure and renewal, act without thinking. How to design these rituals?
Priming: every time you’re tempted by something “bad”, do something “good” instead. (tempted to eat a piece of cake? Eat some fruit! )
Build incrementally: one change at a time and build upon that improvement (a decision to walk every day for 10’, when followed consistently, can lead to a habit of walking 30’ or starting to run and eating healthier food to make faster progress in running, … ).
Getting things done
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen.
In his international bestseller “Getting Things Done” (GTD), David Allen suggests a significant change: getting it all out of your head! He explains the inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done.
While his first book stirred my attention but didn’t allow me to put the theory into practice, the workbook really got me started, and I’ve been using the method ever since. The question “What’s the next action?” has become like a mantra for me (and for my colleagues).
According to the GTD philosophy, your brain is made for creative thinking, not for storing facts and data.
Here’s how it goes:
Set up your workplace, tools and filing system. For of all, you need your own private workspace, a desk, trays, … Personally, I use MS Outlook email, calendar, notes and tasks but any tool will do, providing you use it consistently. The advantage of MS Outlook is that everything is synchronised on the laptop and smartphone, so you never have an excuse not to take a note! You can even dictate them. For paper, I use hanging folders in plastic boxes, an easy to move, very accessible tool.
Capture all your ideas, projects, to-dos, etc., on an external platform. Anything coming to your attention has to go in the system and out of your head, regardless of importance or urgency!
Clarify each item and decide what would be the next action according to the following process:
Image credit David Allen
Organise all items in lists :
For projects, I have one list for Personal Projects and one list for Work Projects. A project is anything that takes more than one step.
For Next Actions, I use one list for Personal and one for Work Tasks.
For emails, I use 4 main folders: Action (these are the items I need to work on), Waiting For (items pending for action from someone else), Someday (things which I can’t do something right away but which may be interesting in the future) and Archive (this is a set of subfolders, alphabetically organised by topic for future reference). All the rest goes to Deleted Items!
For paper documents, I have an Incoming Tray, an Outgoing Tray, a Pending Tray and an archive with hanging folders, alphabetically organised by topic.
Reflect on what’s important to you and review the items in your system. You need a daily habit to use your lists and your system and a weekly practice to check the system.
During your weekly review of the Projects List, you should make sure that each project has at least one next action!
You can use the following 5 step process to plan your projects:
Purpose and principles: Why do you want this? Which values and principles will need to be respected?
Vision of the outcome: How will this project look like when it’s done?
Brainstorming: make sure to capture all ideas which will start flowing, without judging or analysing them.
Organising: group things together and rank them chronologically.
Next Actions: define the next physical thing to do and who will do it.
Engage your tasks, pick which action you wish to undertake at this time and do it! Use your calendar only for time-specific activities (like meetings) or day specific items (deadline for submitting a report). All other things that take more than 2 minutes (remember, if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it NOW! ) go on the lists. Deciding on what to engage in next depends on 4 criteria:
Context: are you in the office, home or on the road?
Time: how much time do you have available before the next commitment?
Energy: what’s your current energy level?
Priority: which task has the highest priority, considering your goals and values?
Rigorously following a system like GTD will primarily reduce your stress because it gives a genuine feeling of being “in control”, rather than being controlled by the events of the day.
Distractions
The word ‘no’ is a great time-saver. Say no to anything that is not the highest and best use of your time. - Brian Tracy
Making optimal use of your energy while it’s at the highest level requires a strict discipline to minimise distractions. However, with the current levels of technology, we are increasingly surrounded by potential distractions, making it difficult to maintain control over our brain.
In “Your Brain at Work”, Dr David Rock teaches some useful strategies to regain focus and work smarter by conserving the brain’s energy for only the most critical tasks.
Turning off all communication devices whenever we need to focus on an important task. Make sure that people know that you answer emails or calls during specific time windows!
Keeping a notepad on the side to write down your thoughts and free your mind;
Take a relaxing walk to lower your stress levels and active the subconscious mind;
Practising mindfulness by focusing on physical sensations such as your breath can help you to get into a calm and focused state of mind;
Applying humour in tense situations;
Paying attention to your expectations to maintain a positive mental state.
Conclusion
“Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. It is this: the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status and happiness in life.” – Brian Tracy
Improving your personal efficiency starts with working on goals and projects which are congruent with your purpose and values. Keep in mind that self-discipline and self-control are limited resources.
Make sure to optimise your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy, steer clear from distractions and consistently use a proven method to get things done while reserving your brain for creative thoughts, rather than storage of information.
Take care and stay safe,
Jürgen
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