I’ve been writing about different productivity methods for Lifehacker for about a year now, and I continue to be shocked by the sheer variety (and quantity) of them that are out there. And while many fit right into my workflow, others led me to think, “Wow, that one wouldn’t work for me at all.”
It’s easy to learn about a technique, see its value, and decide to implement it, but if it’s not altogether aligned with your needs and your preferences, it’s probably not going to work as well for you as advertised. Rather than picking a productivity method that sounds good, you’re better off selecting one that is better suited to you, and how you work. Here’s what to look for.
The best productivity method if you’re a visual thinker…
If you need to visualize something to really understand it—like if you prefer to see graphs instead of reading about statistics or numbers—there are some solid productivity techniques out there for you. The best is probably the “pickle jar” technique, which asks you to imagine your daily capacity as a jar that can hold a finite amount of rocks, pebbles, and sand.
The rocks are your big tasks, pebbles are important tasks that aren’t immediately necessary, and sand is the little maintenance work you do to keep your day moving along. You load in your rocks first, then your pebbles, and finally the sand, to make sure you have enough time for it all. You can draw out a little diagram to help you prioritize your to-do list this way.
The best productivity method if you need motivation to get started…
With some productivity methods, you’re meant to just figure out what you need to do, then get cracking on it. That doesn’t work for everyone. It certainly doesn’t work for me—I need to get a burst of motivation or a spark of energy to keep grinding on a to-do list. The best option for people like me, in my opinion, is eating the frog. It’s a weird saying, but it boils down to tackling your most demanding, dreaded, or important task before you do anything else. In my experience, this works the best for me, because once I have the most pressing thing out of the way, I’m so relieved and proud of myself that anything else I have to do seems easy in comparison. If I can do the terrible thing, I can do anything.
On the other hand, the opposite approach can have a similar result, so try the 10-minute rule if eating the frog feels daunting but you still need a little motivational push. With this method, you blow through all those little tasks that take 10 minutes or less to do, like answering emails or folding the laundry, so you can concentrate on the bigger stuff. As minor as they are, the little things can feel overwhelming, and they’re easy to put off. If you get them all done with so they’re not weighing on you, you’ll feel better and more prepared to do everything else.
The best productivity method if you don’t feel connected to your work…
The tasks of daily life can be menial and if you’re not the kind of person who just buckles down and does what needs to be done, that can be a good reason to put it all off. If you can’t justify spending an afternoon cleaning up or a morning responding to emails, you might be motivated by purpose, so try the Results Planning Method (RPM), which comes from famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who outlined it in his Time of Your Life program and designed it to be motivational, fast, and efficient.
Not only does does the acronym stand for Rapid Planning Method, but it can also serve as a guide to what your day should look like: Results-oriented, purpose-driven, and built around a “massive action plan.” You have to consistently ask yourself what you want, what your purpose is, and what you need to do to achieve it. So maybe you won’t clean up just because it’s that time of the week to do it, but you’ll be more motivated to do it if you think of a broader purpose, like having the house in shape so you can have friends over for dinner. Doing something for the sake of it just doesn’t motivate everyone and that’s fine.
Another way you can feel connected to your tasks is by putting some extra thought into them. The Ivy Lee method calls on you to write down six tasks you have to do the next day. You should do this at the end of every work day (or at the end of the night, if the tasks are home-related). By writing them down, you get them out of your mind and know you’ll get to them the next day, so you can relax in the knowledge that you already have half a plan ready to go when you wake up.
The best productivity method if you need a detailed plan…
When you’re eating the frog or jotting down a few to-dos, you just kind of wing it, designating your “big task” and going for it. But sometimes, it’s nice to have a really detailed schedule in place. Here, I recommend the 3-3-3 method, but first, you’ll need to whip out the old Eisenhower matrix. The matrix forces you to rate your to-dos by urgency and importance.
Once you have everything categorized, you can move over to 3-3-3, which asks you to spend the first three hours of your day engaging in deep work on your most important project, then do three other urgent tasks that don’t require as much time, and finish up with three maintenance tasks. It’s a combination of eating the frog and visualizing the pickle jar, but it incorporates pretty strict scheduling to keep you on task.
