How do you account for the hours in a day? Even when my workday isn’t consumed by meetings, I often look up and feel surprised to find that it’s already afternoon and I don’t have nearly as many things crossed off of my to-do list as I planned. Distraction is a big culprit. The constant pings of emails and Slack notifications certainly feel like work, but I’m usually left with little to show for attending to them.
Over the years, I’ve found a few things that work for me when I need to focus: instrumental music in big headphones, shutting off notifications and using a timer to stay on task, and taking a 10-minute walk outside.
Here are a few ways to figure out your personal productivity style:
Figure out your cognitive style
Fast Company contributor and business consultant Carson Tate says there are four distinct productivity styles: Prioritizer, Planner, Arranger, and Visualizer.
- Prioritizers prefer logical, analytical, fact-based, critical, and realistic thinking. A Prioritizer is at their best when processing data and solving complex problems.
- Planners like organized, sequential, planned, and detail-oriented thinking. They budget the time required to complete projects, organize tasks, create detailed project plans, and complete work ahead of deadlines.
- Arrangers prefer supportive, expressive, and emotional thinking. An Arranger likes to partner with people to get work done and is good at building relationships, and selling ideas.
- Visualizers think strategically about projects and can manage multiple ideas simultaneously. They see the big picture and don’t want to spend time on the details. They can serve as a catalyst for change, brainstorm solutions to problems, and drive innovation.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you figure out the best way to work, both on your own and with your colleagues.
Get the timing right
According to neuroscientists, your brain goes through 90-minute active cycles, so they suggest scheduling a work session for that length of time. Then within those 90 minutes, you can break down your time further:
- First 20 minutes: Perform the hardest tasks in the first 20 minutes. This is when your mind is at its freshest.
- Next 40-70 minutes: Do slower, easier work.
- Next 10 minutes: Take a break.
Researcher Dr. Mithu Storoni advises that if you have multiple tasks to get done, it helps to rank them from taxing to easy and do them in that order. If your hardest task takes longer than 20 minutes, he suggests putting it aside for the start of your next 90-minute work session when your mind is refreshed.
These timing recommendations come with a few caveats. First, don’t expect to pack your day with back-to-back 90-minute work sessions with 10-minute breaks in between. Storoni says you should limit intense mental work to no more than four hours a day in total. You should also modify it depending on how tired you feel, the time of day, and the kind of work you are doing.
Speaking of the time of day, everyone has a time when they are most productive, based on their circadian rhythm. Daniel Pink, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, calls this your “chronotype.” You can figure out your chronotype (whether you’re a morning person, night person, or somewhere in-between) by finding the midpoint between the time you usually go to sleep and the time you wake. Knowing your chronotype helps you identify the stages of your day—peak, trough, and rebound—and allows you to plan your focused work accordingly.
Write it down
A to-do list is the simplest and most common productivity tool, but there are as many ways to write one as there are brands of pens. Explore what works best for you. Google’s executive productivity advisor Laura Mae Martin suggests using the Daily Plan road map, which breaks out tasks into how important they are and how long they take to do. It also includes a daily schedule. She recommends filling it out the night before, so you can start your day with a plan. That’s good advice for any type of to-do list.
Other experts suggest writing an “anti-to-do list” or a “done” list to highlight all the things you did accomplish. This can be especially valuable on the days where it feels like you didn’t get enough done.
And while there are tons of apps and systems for keeping track of what you need to do, it’s been proven that taking the time to write things out by hand (and cross them off!) can make you slow down, focus more, and improve your memory—something we all need, regardless of your productivity style.