When you boil it down. Upping your productivity is about two things, working more efficiently and working to a better plan. You can work as efficiently as possible, powering through an enormous amount of work in one short sprint, but if you're not doing the right work at the right time,
that extra efficiency isn't doing you any good. And when you zoom out and look at an entire days or week's worth of work, you realize that you simply can't bulldoze through meaningful work for eight hours straight, five days in a row. So intelligent planning is the bedrock of all productivity, and even better, if you do your planning at the right time, you can save yourself a lot
of anxiety too. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him. And this is how I work, a show about how to help you do your best work. Welcome to your favorite Tips across ten bite size episodes, I'll be sharing tips from some of the world's best thinkers
that you, the listeners, have found the most useful. We're covering everything from creating better to do lists to setting more effective boundaries around your time, and you'll be hearing from people like best selling author Sally Hepworth, Corona Cast host and journalist Norman Swan, and Google's executive productivity advisor Laura may Martin. Today's favorite tip comes from Jason, and he writes, I have two primary school children, and I'm
a teacher. I've just began at the high school after twenty years in primary school, so this year has been a welcome shock of how the upper schools do it differently due to different subjects I teach and room changes each period. I ensure I put together a to do list every night before leaving for home, a small A five notepad with today's plan of attack written on it. I detail each subject, room number, and the changes if need be, as well as a side note on content.
Each morning, when I log on, I check for any last minute changes or extra relief classes I may need to take. It's been a lot with COVID this year in WA and this notepad then travels with me all day for referencing. It's been incredibly helpful. While it might seem simple, it calms me each night knowing that tomorrow is prepped and noted as a reminder especially with last
minute room changes and relief classes. So here is Laura may Martin, Google's executive productivity advisor, talking about her daily planning. Richell called the daily Plan.
So this is something I've used internally, but given all of the work from home and changes, I actually posted it to the Google blog, so I can send you a link to that. But I call it the daily plan, and I ac actually do it the night before. So one thing that I do is I add three actions that I want to do for the next day, so my top three priorities. That's kind of that what does the successful day look like? And underneath the first one thing I need to do, it says until this first
task is finished, everything else is a distraction. So that's basically like my one thing I need to get done. Then I take a look at hour by hour, which I think is the most important part. So a lot of productivity tips mention this, but planning out what you plan to do hour by hour beforehand makes a huge difference in whether you actually do it. Even just writing down I plan to work out seven to eight makes you way more likely to do that than to wake up and trust yourself. So I do a rough hour
by hour plan. Obviously I don't always know how long naps are going to last, but you know, I do an estimate, and then I also have a little snack size to do. I call it the bottom corner, and I say, okay, if I end up having fifteen extra minutes, those are all tasks that are fifteen minutes or less. So you know, those aren't necessarily my top three. But if I end up having fifteen minutes that I didn't know I had a meeting ends early and nap goes long, you know, I need to have a list of things
I can quickly do. So make that one phone call, you know, do that one email that I've been needing to do. So I have that I have also at the very top it says something that I'm grateful for. And I think I had that in a planner once that I bought, like I think in high school or something, and I just thought it was a great way just
to kick off. You know, you're starting all these things you need to do, maybe feeling stress making this list, but having that at the very top, just something you're grateful for, like maybe that you do have the opportunity to work from home. That's always a good perspective.
That's cool. I like that process. Do you so that's the daily process or the evening process. Do you have any kind of weekly, monthly, quarterly sort of rhythms as well when it comes to planning, prioritizing. What does that look client for you?
Yeah? So weekly I do something similar. I do a template that basically says, you know, what are my priorities for the week, and then not just what do I need to do, but when do I plan to do it? So if I have if I say, like, you know, I really want to complete that project where people get stuck in productivity I think is just listing everything they want to do but never assigning the right place for it.
So I've heard you talk about this in some of your other other episodes, but finding when that natural rhythm you already know you have. So I know that I, you know, tend to be really high energy on Mondays and I can get a lot done because I've been
rested over the weekend. So already knowing that about myself, I can slot things into that Monday time slot that I know Fridays, you know, that's a better day to do things like catching up on articles, I wanted to read or maybe responding to some lower energy emails, creative meetings, catchups. So I try to structure my week and days in kind of like that rhythm where I know when I'm going to be most productive and I slot the things I need to do there.
If you're keen to try out Laura's The Daily Plan, you can download it from the show notes. And if you've just joined in for your favorite tips, make sure you go back and listen to previous episodes in this series to hear which tips other listeners have found the most valuable, including cal and Newport's method for cutting down or needless emails, Oliver Berkman's dune list suggestion, and more. As a listener of how I work, you've hopefully picked up a few tips on this show to help you
work better? But do you want more? And maybe in a book form, because let's face it, books are the most awesome thing on the planet. Well, now you can. In my new book, time Wise, I uncover a wealth of proven strategies that anyone can use to improve their productivity, work, and lifestyle. Time Wise brings together all of the gems that I've learned from conversations with the world's greatest thinkers, including Adam Grant, Dan Pink, Mia Friedman, and Turia Pitt
and many many others. Time Wise is launching on July five, but you can pre order it now from Amantha dot com. And if you pre order time Wise, I have a couple of bonuses for you. First, you'll receive an ebook that details my top twenty favorite apps and software for being time Wise with email, calendar, passwords, reading, cooking ideas,
and more. You will also get a complimentary spot in a webinar that I'm running on June twenty nine, where I will be sharing the tactics from time Wise that I use most often, and also some bonus ones that are not in the book that I use and love. Hop onto Amantha dot com to pre order now. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to Martina who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound
so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.