Productivity vs Busyness

As a freelancer, I normally charge by the hour or by project. Either way, I track every second I spend working for my clients, including any meetings.

I also track other activities, including pitching new clients, marketing my business (including writing this article!), and admin such as paying bills.

How many people who work full time for one company do the same thing? Do you know how many hours you fritter away on pointless tasks? How often do you feel like you’re overwhelming busy, but you don’t seem to get much done?

While some businesses still use timesheets so they can accurately bill clients, most of us don't know what we're spending our time on. We just feel overwhelmingly busy all the time.

There’s a difference between being productive and being busy. Now that I track everything I do in my work day, I can easily see where I’m spending my time. If I’m not getting much done (or I’m not completing the important stuff), then I know why. I then take action (or I at least identify an action) to correct that.

I also (try to) use the Pomodoro method where I set a timer for 20 minutes and then take a five-minute break at the end of that period. And repeat.

And let me tell you, there are plenty of things that I was doing during the working day that I could just cut out completely. Reading the news is a great example of that. I used to start my day on the BBC website browsing the latest stories. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that this added absolutely nothing to do my and, when I thought about, I actually didn't particularly enjoy it. It was just a habit. But once I identified this habit, I could replace it with something else. In this case, I replaced it with a work-related online version of Morning Pages.

Do you have any productivity hacks you’d like to share? How do you make sure you’re taking care of the important tasks rather than just doing “busy” work?

#Productivity #ProductivityHacks