Unload Clutter For Maximum Productivity

I was dangerously close to burning out. It was 2008, a tough year for any business. I spent most of it hard at work, concocting plan after plan to ensure that my business would survive the economic slowdown. As I pushed on, increasingly more things started occupying my mind and my time—seriously affecting my overall productivity.

Not only was I managing my growing internet-based business, which demanded a lot of my attention and energy, but I was also putting new systems into place, coming up with new ideas to market my services, hiring and training new employees, developing new products, and making sure that my current customers are happy with the services I provide. I was overloaded, to say the least.

With all of the tasks I was juggling, I found myself forfeiting more and more of my personal time. I had gotten accustomed to spending long hours purely focusing on my business. There were just too many things to remember at any given point of time, and I relied on my memory to keep track of my daily tasks.

The more things I had to do, the less I actually could do.

It got to the point where I had to either slow down or break down…and I wasn’t about to give up. I started my mission to find a solution to my overworked brain and plummeting productivity before it drove me to an ugly mental crash.

In my quest to find a surefire cure for my 18+ hour workdays, I stumbled across an idea that completely changed everything: “One of Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. ‘You don’t remember your own number?’ the man asked, startled. ‘No,’ Einstein answered.‘Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book in two minutes?’” Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner! Einstein’s solution still holds true today—why memorize a million things, instead of letting paper do the proverbial memorizing for you? All I had to do was unload everything I had to do onto a piece of paper, and keep it close to me at all times. This way, nothing would be left out, and I could just keep checking the list until everything was done! Our Brains Are Like Computers.

It was an excellent solution. When you think about it, our brains are very similar to computers. The more you allocate tasks to your mental RAM, the slower you run, and you end up with fewer resources to work with—efficiency be damned.When you put these tasks on a piece of paper, it’s like you’ve saved them to an external hard drive or USB flash drive, effectively freeing up your memory bandwidth. It’s a much-needed breath of fresh air for your brain! Knowing this, I put every single duty onto this list. After going over it several times to make sure everything was accounted for, I realized something: Most of the things I had to do weren’t actually that important…they just had to be done within a specific amount of time.I couldn’t believe it. This sense of urgency was creating horrible anxiety in me, which was affecting the outcome and causing me to overload. I quickly reprioritized my list, and even delegated lesser, routine tasks to my staff so that I could focus on more pressing issues at hand.I’m happy to report that 2009 is going to be a much better year. I feel renewed since I started writing everything down, and when a duty is less important, I can ask my staff to take care of it so I can focus on anything I choose.And hey, it worked for Albert Einstein—look at how much he accomplished in such a short time span!