The year continues to wind down, and as it does you may have noticed that all of those great goals that you had set in January are coming along very, very slowly. One of your big problems might be that you simply are not as organized as you need to be. Most of our productive time is wasted asking, “what should we do.” This guide is designed to help you clear away this problem.

Context

Most of us suffer from one great productivity problem, and that is an unclear understanding of context. Productivity is really a combination of understanding what you should do, and when you should do it. Understanding what you should do involves creating actionable task lists and being sure that you have the resources to complete those tasks. Understanding when you should do it is a little more subtle.

Define Contexts

The first thing that any productivity ninja should do is define common contexts. For example, I have three major contexts in my life: home, work, outdoors. Each of these contexts contain multiple sub-contexts. However, for the sake of this hack we are only going to deal with the main contexts.

Depending on the context, there are sets of tasks that I can accomplish as well as tasks that I should accomplish. The rule of thumb is that your should list must contain those things that you can only accomplish in the particular context. For example, I can only go grocery shopping when I am outdoors. I can think about it at work or at home, but I can only act on it when I am outdoors.

This is a very powerful idea. Most of the time we spend thinking about tasks outside of their context is wasted. When I am at home, taking a break from the daily grind, I get absolutely nowhere trying to write a blog post in my head or design a new marketing strategy. What it does accomplish is increase my general stress level, making the time I actually do spend working all the more intolerable. The advice that you shouldn’t take your work home with you is pretty good, my addendum to it is that you should only work when you’re working.

Define Your Tasks

Once you have your context’s clearly defined, it’s time to put together your can and should list. This list begins as all To-Do lists do with a set of actionable tasks. An example To-Do list is presented below.

• Write One Blog Post In The Morning
• Write One Blog Post In The Afternoon
• Write One Blog Post In The Evening
• Review Traffic Statistics For Client
• Work On Template For Project X
• Recode CSS For Project Y
• Buy Milk
• Read 50 pages in my book
• Watch An Episode Of Lost

Now it’s time to arrange this list into the contexts that they would most effectively be accomplished. Using this example.

Work

• Review Traffic Statistics For Client
• Work On Template For Project X
• Recode CSS For Project Y

Home

• Write One Blog Post In The Morning
• Write One Blog Post In The Afternoon
• Write One Blog Post In The Evening
• Read 50 pages in my book
• Watch An Episode Of Lost

Outdoors

• Buy Milk

Notice that each of the tasks are arranged in the context that it could most effectively be completed. I could steal a few minutes during work to write a blog post or read, but that would detract from those tasks that I really needed to accomplish, and chances are my writing during work would not be quite as good. The next step once you have a clear understanding of where you should do a particular task is to prioritize the list into can and should.

Can and Should

Every action that we take has a natural priority. In the example that we are using, getting the traffic statistics analyzed might have an quantifiable due date, while reading a book doesn’t really have a set schedule. Your should list should contain those things that must get done by the end of the day. Your can list should be those things that you would like to do, but are not absolutely necessary.

Once you determine your cans and shoulds, remove all the cans. What you have left is your To-Do list for the day, arranged by context and completely actionable. In this example, the final list looks something like this.

Work

• Review Traffic Statistics For Client

Home

• Write One Blog Post In The Morning
• Write One Blog Post In The Afternoon
• Write One Blog Post In The Evening

Outdoors

• Buy Milk

What About Reading

Everything that you have removed from the list does still have its place. The point of removing them is to ensure that your priorities are completed before you start worrying about the “extras”.

Once you have focused your effort and finished your should list you should have plenty of time to work on your can list. This forces you to go from one productive task to another in any particular context, reduces the amount of time wasted coming up with “what to do” and gives you a nice set of “rewards” once you finish your most important tasks.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Here are a few general tips to improve your organization brought to us by wikiHow, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed before you leave.

• Make sure to schedule time for breaks and meals so that you have some time to rest.
• Make sure to schedule tasks evenly through the week, so you aren’t going crazy on Monday and bored on Tuesday.
• Do all of your out-and-about tasks early in the day and early in the week to get them out of the way and to save time.
• Hang a white board (dry erase board) in an easily accessible location and use different colored markers to write tasks of different importance or for different people.

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