- We're talking about effective strategies
to stay motivated at work here on The Journey.
- Time is money, you guys,
so if you're wasting your time you're wasting your money.
So we're gonna teach you some great ways
to stay motivated at work,
and some surprising ways that you might be
actually ruining your workday productivity.
- Starting with limit mobile notifications.
I know I'm super guilty of it,
I have my phone face up on my desk.
So every time I get a notification every time it rings,
beeps, buzzes, whatever.
I'm looking at my phone distracted from my work,
going on Instagram going to the message
and not working not being productive.
- Yeah, that can turn from minutes to hours.
You know, it's too easy, whenever you get that notification,
like, oh, I gotta stop what I'm doing,
you know, I can't pay attention to this anymore.
I got a notification and--
- I, I gotta check the gram.
- Right, exactly, but really, it's just a distraction
from the work you actually have to do.
So there are different things that we can do you know,
with your phone, obviously you could hide your phone,
or download certain apps to actually make sure
that you're using your time wisely.
And it goes beyond just mobile notifications.
I mean, there's even extensions you can use online
on your desktop to actually minimize those distractions,
keep you from going to certain websites
so that you're not wasting your time.
- Yeah, and the tool that you use is just
a Chrome extension called StayFocused.
And it does exactly that, helps you stay focused.
So you can set a timer of cool, I'm working for an hour,
I wanna make sure I block all that,
all those distracting sites,
that I know I'm gonna eventually go to,
'cause I have the tabs open and whatnot.
And what really helped me figure out
where I was spending most of my time
was this app called RescueTime.
What it does is it tracks everything you do
on your computer, but it keeps it basically
top of mind of cool, you're on social media
for four hours today.
You were working for two,
you're on this site for three hours,
whatever that looks like,
you can really understand where all your time is going
and start to eliminate some of those things
where you should probably shouldn't be using it as often.
- And number two is do less, but do it more strategically.
So this brings to mind Pareto's principle or the 80/20 rule.
So basically this economist Vilfredo Pareto,
he, a long time ago, realized that 20% of the population
owned 80% of Italy's land.
- Okay.
- So basically what that translates to
is that 80% of the results that you're gonna get
come from 20% of the actual work that you're doing.
So basically focus on that 20%
that's what's gonna make a difference.
You know, not all of your tasks have
that same importance.
- Right, and I like to really like help people understand
and really figure out what that 20% is
by just thinking of a graph.
So on the left hand side, we have importance
of effectiveness on the bottom we have time.
Then you're gonna basically put it into
four different quadrants.
So up here, we have high
importance effectiveness, low time.
Basically you wanna find your sweet spot
all the items that fit there, you wanna do those first.
Bottom left have, low time, low importance or effectiveness.
That's not really that important
'cause it's not very effective, it's not important.
Over the bottom right here, we have high time,
low effectiveness and importance
so really don't wanna touch that at all.
And then top right, high time,
high importance and effectiveness,
we wanna really make sure that, the items there,
they're gonna take a lot of times
where you have to section out.
But that sweet spot is high importance, high effectiveness,
but low time get those done first,
make sure that that's a part of that 20%.
- Yeah, something that really helps me
is if it's a task that you can take care of
in two minutes or less, do it right then,
if not, then you know, put it on your to do list
and knock it out later.
And our third strategy is schedule less time than necessary.
You're a big fan of this one, right, Justin?
- Yeah, sure, she's basically saying I don't like to work.
But no, so schedule less time than necessary.
I know with meetings, I like to do this a lot,
instead of going the full 30 minutes,
I'll schedule a 15 minutes, so we get all that content in
same goes with your tasks, right?
Parkinson's law, I talk about it a lot,
but basically it means how however much time
you give yourself to complete a task,
whether it's an hour a week, whatever that might be,
that's how long it's going to take you.
So if you set aside time to do
whatever task that you would have done in an hour,
schedule for 30 minutes.
You'll be surprised that you'll actually get it done
and now have 30 minutes, go do whatever you want, like nap.
- And that leads us to our next point,
- Yeah, leave time for naps.
- I wish but no, it is schedule your unscheduled time.
So it's really important to make sure
that you're setting aside that time to deal with
all those notifications or any unexpected things.
Because if you don't set aside that time,
then all of a sudden, your entire day's schedule is just gonna
be thrown in the garbage because--
- Right, you have meetings back to back to back
with no breathing room, telling everyone,
I have a hard stop at 11:30 except to go
to another meeting, I've a hard stop at 12
and you don't even get to eat lunch.
Happens too often, make sure you schedule
that unscheduled time and put yourself as busy
that time is yours to just reset, reflect
on whatever's coming next, give yourself that needed time.
- Yeah, you're gonna wanna at least leave about
one third of your day as unscheduled
because those notifications, all those unexpected tasks
take up a lot of time.
- Right.
- So leave about one third of your day,
and that way it gives your brain that time to really reset,
recharge, and be able to focus on the other tasks
really more efficiently.
- Now moving on to our next
strategy is procrastinate productively.
And what that means is go for a small walk,
complete little tasks, like tidying up,
just anything to kinda of reset
and do something that's not your actual work
and procrastinate, but don't just procrastinate there
to play video games or sit on the couch,
do something that's productive to
another portion of your life.
- Yeah, this is actually my favorite one
because I'm really bad about procrastinating.
So this helps me because you know,
if I have a really monotonous task that I need to do--
- Yeah
- And I'm sitting there just dreading it,
I will tell myself, okay, you have five minutes
to procrastinate if you go and do the dishes, right?
So all of a sudden my options are okay,
you can either do this task or you can go do the dishes.
And so if I really, really wanna procrastinate,
then at least I'm doing the dishes as well.
- You don't have to do them later.
- Number six is a fun one.
It's gamify it.
So I know I'm really competitive,
so I'll turn something into a, you know, a fun task,
like setting the timer for 10 to 20 minutes,
challenge yourself to get that task done in that 20 minutes.
- Yeah, and I know I like to do this
just to give myself little rewards.
So when I'm building out a website or doing whatever task,
I'll set that timer for 45 minutes an hour,
then when I'm done with that,
I'll go and play Xbox for like 10 minutes just to reset.
That's my little gamification reward I have there
but that timer, it's really helped me to like cool,
I gotta get this test done in an hour,
being a little competitive with myself goes a long way.
- Yeah, we actually have a video right over here
about the pomodoro technique,
which is a really great way that you can use
a timer to make yourself more efficient.
- The next strategy we have for you is
to limit decision making.
Sometimes making decisions all day is hard.
There's actually a term for that called decision fatigue.
So the more options and choices and decisions
that you have to make all day,
the less productive you're actually gonna end up being.
- Yeah, I'm extremely indecisive.
Like, I'll stand in front of my closet, you know,
I'm like, I don't know what to wear, whatever, wasted time.
So a really great example of this is Steve Jobs.
So everyone knows that he wore that
same black turtleneck all the time.
The reason he did that, because it was one less decision
he had to make every single day.
That way he could spend more of his time and energy
actually focusing on his business, rather than focusing on
what should I wear.
- Time to update my wardrobe.
- Our next strategy if you're having a hard time staying
motivated is to change your surroundings.
It's amazing how just going to a different environment
can really change your effort and re-energize you.
- Yeah, absolutely, where are some of the places
that you like to go to re-energize yourself?
- So really depends on your personality
and what works best for you.
I know for me if I need to focus,
I need to be somewhere that's a lot more quiet.
So I could go to like a coffee shop
and get more caffeine while I'm at it,
but some people, you know, they need to go to a more
energetic environment, it really just depends on your style.
- Yeah, I know I like to go to
a different co working spaces
just because there's so many people just like me
kinda of that that collaborative effort
helps me get my energy going.
Or I just see other people like just crushing it
and working - like the competitiveness in me is like cool,
I need to do better than them.
So it helps me work or there's always the library to go
and have that free option, and that's super, super quiet.
- Yeah, there's a great co working place in Austin
that actually allows you to bring your dogs
so not only, you know, are you able to work there,
but there's dogs everywhere, so it's like heaven.
- So those are our effective strategies
to stay motivated at work.
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This is The Journey thanks for watching.