Productivity – Is It All About Prioritizing to Feel Good at the End of the Week?

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

We all have tasks within our job that we like better than others, and most of us have some level of procrastination ability with the tasks we like less.

So, I use a system that works for me and it may work for you depending on several factors including how you think, learn and approach work as discussed in our “Do you know how you learn” career tip

I like to write down on a Monday morning all the things I need to do this week and then I assign priority- one being needs to happen ( like this weekly career tip column), to sales work (which I quantify by how many people I will talk to in a week), to admin and even life admin. Some things have a two, three, four or five assigned to them. If I get through all my ones, and half of my twos then by the end of the week I feel a sense of achievement and can have a reward of some kind. Possibly because I score very low on hedonism on the Hogan personality test this works for me and I can understand how other people would not like this feeling but the point is, there are ways to know yourself and get a system that works for you.

The next week I look back at the same list and ensure things dont stay low ranked. Even if it’s something I hate doing, I commit to making it a one within 3 -4 weeks( if that works for whatever the task is).

Have a go! It might help.

If you would like to figure out more about how you optimally work, Nicki is a qualified organizational psychologist and Exec coach. Contact nicki@theglasshammer.com or nicki@evolvedpeople.com for a free 15 mins exploratory session.