HOW TO HAVE YOUR MOST PRODUCTIVE WEEK EVER

Now let’s go a little bigger. Let’s look at making every week more productive. This time, instead of taking advice from me, we’ll follow the routine of a successful CEO. Again, you can apply this to any situation, professional or personal; if you’re a stay-at-home parent, your family is your job, arguably more important than any “work.”

Jim Whitehurst

Jim Whitehurst is the president and CEO of Red Hat, one of the largest and most successful providers of open-source software. Before that he was the chief operating officer of Delta Airlines. Before that he was a director and vice president of Boston Consulting Group. So yeah, he knows a little about personal productivity . . . and, if it’s one of your goals, how to climb the corporate ladder.

Here’s what Jim does, and what you should try.

Step 1: Every Sunday, map out your week.

Every Sunday evening Jim sits down with his list of important objectives for the month and year. Those goals inform the upcoming week and help keep him on track. While long-range goals may not be urgent, they are important, and if you aren’t careful, the important can easily be pushed aside by the urgent.

Then he looks at his calendar for the week. He knows what times are blocked out by meetings, etc. Then he looks at what he wants to accomplish and slots those tasks into his to-do list.

The key is to create structure and discipline for your week. Otherwise you’ll let things happen to you instead of making things happen. Otherwise you’ll let “urgent” push aside what is truly important.

Step 2: Actively block out task time.

You already schedule meetings and appointments. Go a step further and block out time to complete specific tasks. Slot periods for “Write new proposal” or “Craft presentation” or “Review and approve marketing materials.”

If you don’t proactively block out that time, those tasks will slip. Or those tasks will get interrupted. Or you’ll lose focus. Whatever the reason, important tasks will never be completed.

I love David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, but success isn’t based on getting things done. Success is based on getting important things done.

Step 3: Follow a realistic to-do list.

Once upon a time Jim created to-do lists, but he didn’t assign time to each task. What happened? He always had more items on his to-do list than he could accomplish, and that turned his to-do list into a wish list. If you have six hours of meetings scheduled today and eight hours of tasks on your to-do list, those tasks won’t get done.

Assigning realistic time frames forces you to prioritize. Assigning realistic time frames also helps you stay focused. When you know a task should take only thirty minutes, you’ll be more aggressive in weeding out and ignoring distractions.

Step 4: Default to thirty-minute meetings.

Whoever invented the one-hour default in calendar software wasted millions of people-hours. Most subjects can be handled in thirty minutes. Many can be handled in fifteen minutes—especially if everyone who attends knows ahead of time that the meeting will last only fifteen minutes.

Don’t be a slave to the default settings on your calendar tool. Schedule an hour only if you absolutely know you need an hour.

Step 5: Stop multitasking.

During a meeting—especially an hour-long meeting—it’s tempting to take care of a few mindless tasks. (Who hasn’t cleaned up their in-box during a meeting?) The problem is that splitting your focus makes those meetings less productive.

Even though you’re only doing mindless stuff, still, you’re distracted. And that makes you less productive.

Multitasking is a personal-productivity killer. Don’t try to do two things sort of well. Do one thing really, really well.

Step 6: Obsess about leveraging “edge” time.

Probably like you, Jim’s biggest downtimes during the workday come when he drives to work, when he drives home, and when he’s in airports.

He focuses extremely hard on how to productively use that time. He almost always schedules calls for his drive to work. It’s easy: He takes the kids to school and drops them off at a specific time; then he can do a call from eight to eight thirty. He typically doesn’t schedule calls for the drive home so he can use that time to return calls he missed during the day, especially to people who are on the West Coast.

At the airport he uses Pocket, a browser plug-in that downloads articles. Loading ten articles ahead of time ensures that he has plenty to read—plenty he wants to read—while he’s waiting in the security line.

Look at your day. Identify the downtimes. Then schedule productive things you can do during that time. Call it “edge time”—because using it well can create a major productivity edge.

Step 7: Track your time.

Once you start tracking your time, you’ll be amazed by how much time you spend doing stuff that isn’t productive. (You don’t have to get hyperspecific. The info you log can be a summary of activities, not a minute-to-minute diary.)

Tracking time was an eye-opening experience for Jim—and one that has really helped him focus.

Step 8: Be thoughtful about lunch.

Your lunch may take an hour. Or thirty minutes. Or ten minutes. However long it takes, be thoughtful about what you do.

If you like to eat at your desk and keep chugging, great. But if you benefit from using the break to recharge, lunch is one time when multitasking is in fact productive: You can network, make connections, build bridges between people and departments. But not if you go out to lunch with the same people every day.

Pick two days a week to go out with people you don’t know well. Or take a walk. Or do something personally productive.

Say you take an hour for lunch each day; that’s five hours a week. Be thoughtful about how you spend all those hours. You don’t have to work, but you should make whatever you do work for you.

Step 9: Protect your family time.

Jim admits he’s something of a workaholic. (I know very few CEOs—in fact, I know no CEOs—who are not workaholics.) So he’s become very thoughtful about his evenings. When he gets home from work, it’s family time: They have dinner as a family and he and his wife help the kids with their homework. He completely shuts off work: no phone, no e-mail.

Generally speaking, Jim has two hours before the kids need to get ready for bed. During that time he’s there. Then he can switch back on. He’s comfortable leaving work at five or five thirty because at eight or nine o’clock, he knows he will be able to reengage with work.

Every family has peak times when its members can best interact. If you don’t proactively free up that time, you will often slip back into work mode. Either be working or be home with your family. Don’t just “be there.” Be with your family.

Step 10: Start every day right.

Jim exercises first thing in the morning, partly to stay fit but also because exercise is energizing. Research shows that moderate aerobic exercise can improve your mood for up to twelve hours—so why not exercise first thing and take advantage of being in a good mood for the rest of the day? Research also shows that exercise boosts energy; why not take advantage of a natural energy surge when you probably need it the most?

Jim gets up early and runs. Then he cools off while he reads the newspaper, and he gets downstairs before his kids do so he can eat breakfast with them.

Try it. Not only will you get an energy boost from exercising when you wake up, but being efficient and productive in the morning will set the stage for the rest of your day. Getting something productive done right away is fun, and it’s motivating. Success → Motivation → More Success → More Motivation . . . so why not get your virtuous cycle started right away?