Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: On the simplest level, it's just nice to remind yourself
Speaker 2: that you sort of almost always, even when you feel
Speaker 2: like a day didn't go very productively, you actually probably
Speaker 2: did a whole lot of stuff. It's incredibly easy to
Speaker 2: forget the sort of number of genuinely worthwhile things that
Speaker 2: you did.
Speaker 1: If you're a knowledge worker, you have to be your
Speaker 1: own boss, your own manager. Even if you're not self
Speaker 1: employed and you have a real manager, the nature of
Speaker 1: knowledge work means you need to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time working on complex, multi phase pieces of work independently,
Speaker 1: and that requires a lot of self discipline and some
Speaker 1: pretty involved self management. Unfortunately, we expect a lot from
Speaker 1: ourselves as workers, but we're not very kind to ourselves
Speaker 1: as bosses. We want top performance all the time, and
Speaker 1: we don't take a moment to reward ourselves, to pat
Speaker 1: ourselves on the back when we do succeed. This is
Speaker 1: obviously detrimental to our happiness, but it's also ironically pretty
Speaker 1: bad for our productivity. If we're constantly berating ourselves and
Speaker 1: never pausing to acknowledge our achievements, we get stuck in
Speaker 1: negative feedback loops. Your to do list will never actually end,
Speaker 1: because you'll always need to add more items to it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And sorry, I don't have a solution for that. But
Speaker 1: what you can do is compile a done list so
Speaker 1: that the to do list doesn't expand forever in only
Speaker 1: one direction. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him.
Speaker 1: And this is how I work, a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. Welcome to your
Speaker 1: Favorite Tips across ten bite size episodes. I'll be sharing
Speaker 1: tips from some of the world's guest thinkers that you,
Speaker 1: the listeners, have found the most useful. We're covering everything
Speaker 1: from creating better to do lists to setting more effective
Speaker 1: boundaries around your time, and you'll be hearing from people
Speaker 1: like best selling author Sally Hepworth, Corona Cast host and
Speaker 1: journalist Norman Swan, and Google's executive productivity advisor Laura May Martin.
Speaker 1: Today's favorite tip comes from Melissa, and she writes, my
Speaker 1: favorite tip is from your episode with Oliver Berkman about
Speaker 1: reframing how we think about our to do lists. I
Speaker 1: actually consciously did this yesterday when faced with my dreaded
Speaker 1: to do list and gave myself a little high five
Speaker 1: at the end of the day for completing three separate
Speaker 1: documents and sending them out for stakeholder feedback. So here
Speaker 1: is best selling author and Guardian columnist Oliver Berkman talking
Speaker 1: about how he approaches his to do list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is an incredibly simple notion. That is just
Speaker 2: the idea that in addition to all these lists that
Speaker 2: we keep or systems that we have to tell us
Speaker 2: and organize all the things we have not yet done,
Speaker 2: the sort of terrible weight of the of the not
Speaker 2: yet completed things. Cut yourself some slack, keep a list
Speaker 2: of that you add to of the things that you complete. Right,
Speaker 2: keep keep keep a record of of what you do.
Speaker 2: Some of the ways that people organize there there to
Speaker 2: do is will naturally create these. Right if you're sort
Speaker 2: of moving things among columns on a can band board
Speaker 2: or something like that, you're going to naturally come up
Speaker 2: with a list of completed items. But if you're the
Speaker 2: just have a sort of regular to do list, like
Speaker 2: keep one other list where you literally write something down
Speaker 2: every time you've you've crossed it off one list, or
Speaker 2: even if you wasn't on that list. You know, if
Speaker 2: you do it, write it on the done list. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, in the simplest level, it's just nice to
Speaker 2: remind yourself that that you sort of almost always, even
Speaker 2: when you feel like a day didn't go very productively,
Speaker 2: you actually probably did a whole lot of stuff. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly easy to forget the sort of number of genuinely
Speaker 2: worthwhile things that you did. On a subtler level, I
Speaker 2: think it helps challenge this notion that a lot of
Speaker 2: people have, and that I certainly am still to some
Speaker 2: extent afflicted by that you sort of start each morning
Speaker 2: in a condition of what I called productivity debt. You
Speaker 2: know that like you owe it to yourself or maybe
Speaker 2: to your boss or something to to sort of pay
Speaker 2: off this debt through being productive, and hopefully, on a
Speaker 2: really good day you might get back up to like
Speaker 2: zero balance. You might get yourself out of overdraft and
Speaker 2: out of debt and back to zero, which is a
Speaker 2: really kind of I mean, there are lots of reasons
Speaker 2: for it, but it's a really unfortunate and self punishing
Speaker 2: way to frame work, and it's tied into all these
Speaker 2: kind of ideas that people have about their self worth
Speaker 2: and about the idea that they're not really justifying their
Speaker 2: existence on the planet, not really really have a right
Speaker 2: to exist unless they unless they sort of pull off
Speaker 2: a certain amount of tasks. Obviously, people are in jobs
Speaker 2: where they do, in another sense, have to do a
Speaker 2: certain amount of tasks to get paid. But in this
Speaker 2: existential sense, you know, I think a lot of people have,
Speaker 2: certainly me historically, have tied up their sense of sort
Speaker 2: of basic adequacy as a human with how productive they're being.
Speaker 2: And the great thing about a done list is it
Speaker 2: sort of rewires this a bit, and it helps you
Speaker 2: to think, well, how about you start the morning at
Speaker 2: zero and everything that you do is extra, like it's
Speaker 2: a deposit into your productivity bank account instead of just
Speaker 2: paying off a debt. Why not think about it that way?
Speaker 2: Why not think that you're absolutely enough as you are,
Speaker 2: and then if you manage to do a whole lot
Speaker 2: of cool things today, that's all extra and it's all great.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. I love that reframe because I've never
Speaker 1: been able to consistently keep a done list, even though
Speaker 1: I really like the advice and interesting. I've recently changed
Speaker 1: my workflow around how I managed tasks, and I was
Speaker 1: listening to you talk about your to do list strategy
Speaker 1: and the long list and the short list, or I
Speaker 1: think in the book you're referred to it as an
Speaker 1: open list and a closed list. Yeah, which really resonated
Speaker 1: with me, and I've recently someone put me onto this
Speaker 1: software called Motion. Annoyingly, there are two calendar software is
Speaker 1: called Motion and for anyone that is interested, it's Usemotion
Speaker 1: dot iow dot com. And how it works is that
Speaker 1: you have your combines your task list and I guess
Speaker 1: this would be the well, I guess the closed list
Speaker 1: with your calendar. So you're seeing both on the same screen,
Speaker 1: and you enter your tasks on the left hand side,
Speaker 1: and you assign an approximate time of how long they
Speaker 1: would take to complete, and then you drag and drop
Speaker 1: them into your calendar. So it's sort of automatically time
Speaker 1: boxes for you in terms of that task then becomes
Speaker 1: a meeting with yourself. And then when you finish the task,
Speaker 1: like normally, what would happen if you were just doing
Speaker 1: normal time boxing is time would pass and you would
Speaker 1: have finished the task. But with this, you actually get
Speaker 1: to tick it off and it stays in your calendar.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of grade out, so like you get
Speaker 1: to the end of the day and you feel that
Speaker 1: sense of achievement or progress because everything you've completed is
Speaker 1: still there, but it's ticked off, and you get to
Speaker 1: tick it off as you go through your day, which also,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just good in terms of giving you
Speaker 1: that dopamine hit as you go throughout it, but it's
Speaker 1: also good in terms of not over scheduling yourself because
Speaker 1: you kind of like, you like, if you treat that
Speaker 1: task list as the closed list, and then you make
Speaker 1: sure that you have time to fit everything physically into
Speaker 1: your calendar, then you kind of end up with this
Speaker 1: perfectly balanced calendar. I find I personally love the idea
Speaker 1: of a done list. It avoids that all too common
Speaker 1: feeling of getting to the end of the day and
Speaker 1: wondering what did I actually do today. On the days
Speaker 1: where I do remember to write a done list, I
Speaker 1: feel a really powerful sense of progress and like my
Speaker 1: time was really well spent, much more so than when
Speaker 1: I don't finish my day with writing a done list.
Speaker 1: As the listener of how I work, you've hopefully picked
Speaker 1: up a few tips on this show to help you
Speaker 1: work better, but do you want more, and maybe in
Speaker 1: a book form, because let's face it, books are the
Speaker 1: most awesome thing on the planet. Well, now you can.
Speaker 1: In my new book, time Wise, I uncover a wealth
Speaker 1: of proven strategies that anyone can use to improve their productivity, work,
Speaker 1: and lifestyle. Time Wise brings together all of the gems
Speaker 1: that I've learned from conversations with the world's greatest thinkers,
Speaker 1: including Adam Grant, Dan Pink, Mia Friedman, and Turia Pitt
Speaker 1: and many many others. Time Wise is launching on July five,
Speaker 1: but you can preorder it now from Amantha dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you pre order time Wise, I have a
Speaker 1: couple of bonuses for you. First, you'll receive an ebook
Speaker 1: that details my top twenty favorite apps and software for
Speaker 1: being time wise with email, calendar, passwords, reading, cooking ideas
Speaker 1: and more. You will also get a complimentary spot in
Speaker 1: a webinar that I'm running on June twenty nine, where
Speaker 1: I will be sharing the tactics from time Wise that
Speaker 1: I use most often, and also some bonus ones that
Speaker 1: are not in the book that I use and love.
Speaker 1: Hop onto Amantha dot com to pre order now. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Matt Nimba who
Speaker 1: does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See
Speaker 1: you next time. I'm