I see the kind of person that will write down this massive
laundry list of things that I want to get done.
And by the end of the day, I will look back on it and realize
I haven't done half of it.
Did you ever feel that way? Because I certainly did.
And I felt like such a failure for not be able
to complete that massive list of things I wanted myself to do.
But then I realized my issue is that I had a massive to do list.
Not so much in the fact that I didn't do anything about it,
but the fact that I was actually overwhelming myself
and not able to get anything done because of it.
So that's why I decided to be much more intentional with my time.
So in this video, I'm going to share with you
my top three tips on making my days more productive so I can then spend
time away from work and more quality time with my family and friends.
At the moment, it's mainly with my toddler daughter
who just have boundless energy and just want to run outside all the time.
Hi there. Welcome back to my channel.
I'm Lori Wang.
I'm a digital marketing and social media strategist
who has previously built my personal brand into a business over the last few years.
And I'm also a creator in the trenches, learning and sharing my lessons
along the way.
To help you create a life doing what you love.
So if that all sounds interesting,
make sure to hit the subscribe button and hear the modification bell.
So you get notified every time I release a new video.
All right.
So here is how I actually gave myself much more breathing room and got more done.
So tip number one is that I realized the only thing that I should be doing
every single day
is to list the top three things that I want to get done for that day.
And I think anything beyond that is just a bonus.
So remember what I said earlier in the video when I made this
massive laundry list of everything that I want to do.
And it's very natural, right?
For all of us who are ambitious and goal oriented.
We have a million things in our mind I want to accomplish today right now.
But the problem is, is that we need to realize
we only have a finite amount of attention span and also physical energy
that we can spend on our task every single day.
And actually, usually speaking again, we might be either a morning person
or a night person.
But in my case, as a morning person,
I think that I tend to have more energy in the beginning of the day.
And if I actually just have top three things on the top of my mind
or on my list right now that I want to get done for that day,
that really helps me to hone in my energy for the things that matter to me
the most.
That will really move me forward, albeit is
one little tiny step at a time every single day.
And this is something that I really had to embrace as I became a mom
is I realized I don't have as much time as I used to before I had kids.
And that's just the truth, right?
So I mentally have accepted the fact that I will have a lot less time
and therefore a lot less I can do for that time.
So in this case, by having just the three things I want to accomplish
that day, it releases a lot more pressure off my shoulders.
I'll feeling like I need to do this whole major long list of everything
I want to get done and actually feeling so overwhelmed and feeling
such a deflated person by the end of it, if I haven't done so.
Whereas if only three top things are really moving forward,
that's really important for that day or that weeks goal.
Then I feel like I'm actually moving forward and creating momentum, right?
And that will really help me to continue that feeling
of wanting to get more done on my goals and to push myself for even more.
So I think the key thing here is that what works for me is psychologically
making myself feel good about the fact that I'm getting things done.
That's important to me right now.
That's aligned to the values and the goals I have in my business.
And the best part is that if you get more things done beyond those top
three things, let's say another one or two bonus things, take it off your list,
then you're basically a super hero, right?
So I think the key lesson here is that by really honing in on what is it
I want to accomplish, let's say for the next month
and then looking backwards, then how do I want to accomplish that within this week?
And then how do I want to move towards that within today?
That really helps you break down the top three things that's important,
that long list of things that we all have running the back of our heads,
and how do we make sure we get those three things done first
before we do anything else?
And honestly speaking from personal experience,
but also knowing what the human brain is that we really have about 4 to 5 hours
at most of peak performance hours in our day
that we can use on the things that matter to us the most
and maybe spend the rest of the time when you do have those low periods
on things that might not be as important in your priority list,
but you can also get done in the background.
My second tip is that I stop checking my emails constantly all the time,
and now I only set a time for checking them three times a day.
So once, early in the morning,
once around noon, and once in the evening after my daughter's gone to bed.
Because when the biggest time's up and also distractions, my attention span
has been checking emails constantly and.
I realize this because as emails come in, there's almost this like dopamine
rush, right?
That makes you want to open that email straight away to see what is all about.
And then maybe you read it, you kind of deliberate over it,
and then you think about it.
But some of you know it. There's another half an hour gone.
And actually, this happens more constantly than we think it does.
So if you ever think that's the period of you
checking your emails constantly, you know exactly what I mean.
And what I realized is that sometimes after checking emails constantly,
I might take another 50 minutes just to get back into the flow of things
of whatever I was working on that moment.
So imagine the disruption of your scatterbrained throughout the day
of having to check emails in regular basis like that.
And actually, you should probably build up the reputation
and also the expectations to others that you don't reply straight away.
But perhaps you might take, I don't know, maybe overnight or maybe every two days
to get back on the inquiry
or perhaps for clients or for things that are much more urgent.
You can get back within a few hours.
And the key thing is once you do check your email during those set times
during the day,
then make sure when you do open the email, decide what you wanna do with it.
Is it something you can action right now?
If it's not, is it going to take longer, maybe scheduled for later?
Or is this something
you need to delegate to someone else, send it over to that person straight away?
But the key thing here is that you never want to look back at the same email twice,
because I'll really cut down the time that you spent on the emails overall.
And I really recommend this great book called Get Things Done, which
some of you might have heard about this before by the author David Allen.
And actually, I'm not alone in this, is that there's actually a community out
there, people who love his method and they call themselves the GTD ers.
So there's a community behind this.
Anyway, so I reference this book because I think it can be applied
to email just as anything else that we currently have our own to do list.
So the method that David refers to is a method that allows us
to make a decision on the email very quickly.
It's a two minute check.
So basically when the email come in to your inbox
and you're actually checking them
in the set times in the day where you have this group of emails to go through.
Then when you first open the email, the thing to ask yourself
is, is this something I can action within 2 minutes or perhaps less?
If it is, then go ahead and do it right now.
If not, then you want to schedule for later point in time
and it is something you can delegate to someone else to help you do this.
Then make sure for that.
On to a team member, let's say in this case, or perhaps one of your assistants.
And so the emails that you have address and finish them,
make sure that archive it and get it out of your overall inbox.
So therefore you never go back to the same email twice again.
I actually use this to call Boomerang, where I then schedule the emails
that I currently don't want to deal with at the moment
because it might take me a lot longer at that point in time
and I scheduled for a point in time in the future
when I know that I can go back and get that done at that point
and be currently a G-mail user.
This is something that you can incorporate in your Gmail system straight away.
And the third tip is single focus.
And single focus has been absolutely transformative on my productivity.
And I used to be pretty much a recovering multitasker all the time.
And studies have shown that multitasking actually distracts your brain
from being able to focus on one project at a time, which as you're
switching from one task to another, it will actually slow you down.
And as your brain
are dealing with this in the long term,
it will actually change your overall brain structure
and how you're able to focus on things one at a time.
So instead of multitasking, like I used to do all the time
when I've done this, I actually now intentionally block out
20 to 40 minutes of my time each day working on one single task.
And once that's done, I will then move on to the next one,
obviously allowing for some break in between.
Now, here's a bonus tip that I want to share to help you,
and that is I want you to procrastinate
and hear me on this one is that I want you to procrastinate the right way.
And what I mean by that is that
I want you to actually use this time that you procrastinating to do something
that's completely unrelated to your business or your project.
So maybe you could be trying out a new cooking recipe
or maybe try a new hobby that you're actually gravitating towards.
But the key thing is
that you're using this time intentionally on something that interests you
rather than just aimlessly, let's say, scrolling through Instagram.
So you've actually set a goal
for what you want to during this time, then you procrastinating,
then actually just aimlessly spending the time away
and not knowing what you done with that time.
So at the end of that procrastination period,
you actually feel like you done something with the time of feeling accomplished
rather than feeling frustrated that you lost that time.
So these are some my tips I used in my past to help
make my day more productive, and I hope that it was helpful to you as well.
If you found the video helpful, make sure you give it a thumbs up
and also share it with a friend who can also use this right now
and let me know in the comments
which one of these tips will you be trying this week?
I look forward to hearing from you in the meantime.
Have a wonderful day.
Thank you for watching. And I'll see you in the next video.