Enhance the six steps of your workflow

- [Narrator] This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - [Lady] I look at work coming in as a constant flow. So if you can picture it as a circle with arrows, sadly, the work flow never stops. Correct? So it just continues to come in. So first, we have to figure out. Step one is what do we need to do? You have to determine what to do. So how do you get your arms around the world of all of your to-dos? And for many people that's a challenge because they have some things written on a sticky note. They have some things that somebody texted them. Then they've got their email and they've got calls and voicemail. Plus now they have so social media and I've got an inbox here and an inbox there and many people feel very disjointed with many of their inputs living in several different places and they don't really have one system, one way that they can get their arms around everything so that they can even determine what to do. - [Pete] Aha. - [Lady] So that's the first step, is getting that piece organized. And then after that, you've got to figure out when am I going to do it? And so there is a prioritization, there's a scheduling. There's a, what can I realistically fit in and what is going to get done and when? So that's step two. And then step three is, how do we actually focus? We know what to do, we've got a little block of time that we sit down to work on it and our attention is all over the place. So, I really believe that concentration is a long lost art. Especially many of us trying to work at home it becomes been more challenging. And then step four is, we have to find the information that we need to do the work. And that's where, if people have overflowing inboxes, a bit poor filing methods and they can't put their hands on what they want when they want it they get stuck on that step. And then the last piece of the loop and there are six steps, but the fifth step in the loop is to close the loop. So it's actually getting work done, turning things in, being efficient. Actually, trying to maximize how efficiently they can do work. I've had people in my office actually watching me work. And so there are systems piece that you can use to tighten up your efficiency. And then the last step is managing your own capacity. So if you got a really bad night's sleep last night because you didn't make your bed, maybe no, I'm kidding. But you got a bad night's sleep you are not going to feel like being energetic and productive. You're going to want to put your head on the desk and take a nap. And so self care becomes a critically important component of managing one's productivity. So that's kind of the foundation on which everything is based. Without those proper self care habits you will not have the energy that you need to devote to your work, to your family, to your loved ones, et cetera. So that in a nutshell, Pete, is the productivity workflow formula.