The following article was published in Northern Nevada Business Weekly, December, 2003.

Tightening Your Schedule for Maximum Productivity
Joelle K. Jay, Ph.D.

Have you ever noticed that the tighter your schedule is, the more you get done? The busiest people always seem to be the most productive. Unfortunately, this suggests that the most productive people are the ones who work the most. And this is simply not true.

In fact, it can be unhealthy, unwise, and unproductive to work too much. It’s misunderstanding the principle at work behind the correlation between time scarcity and productivity that causes stress, overwork, and inefficiency.

It’s not the people who work more who maximize their time. It’s the people who maximize their time who get more done. And people who maximize their time actually work less. Thus, the most productive people are those who tighten their work schedules, get more done in less time, and have time left over to rest, relax, and rejuvenate.

This is the principle of efficiency. How can you make this principle work for you? Here are five steps for creating the efficiency that will keep you productive and at your best.

Step 1: Identify Your Most Efficient Patterns
The first step is to identify your most efficient patterns. When is your energy really flowing, and when you tend to slow down? Knowing your internal rhythm is one way to harness your energy.

Once you have determined that rhythm, arrange your schedule to fit. A morning person might start the day concentrating on projects that demand undivided attention, saving the afternoons, when her energy declines, for less taxing, lower priority activities. A night owl may ease into the day and save his afternoons, the time when his mind is most engaged, for items that require more mental energy.

Step 2: Map Out Your Ideal
Having identified your most efficient patterns, plan your days around them to put your energy to work.

To get started, write down all of the activities you do in a day. Prioritize them in order of importance. Then on a blank calendar page, sketch in the activities to create what would be a truly ideal day, scheduling the most important things first in a way that maximizes your energy.

Got some leftover items? This is where efficiency comes in: the less important things need to fit into less time. Delegate them, find new systems for getting them done faster, or decide they don’t need to be done at all.

Step 3: Make it Real
Now it’s time to get real. In this step, you transfer the ideal schedule you’ve mapped out to your actual calendar, coming as close as possible to your efficient, high-energy plan.

At first, your present calendar may bear little relationship to the ideal you’ve so boldly mapped out. As you continue planning into the future, you will become more and more proactive in determining which activities happen when.

A few tips to making this step count:
• Consider your activities to be appointments. If you schedule Tuesday morning to work on a big presentation, your calendar is booked. No matter that your appointment is with yourself—it is equally as important as if the meeting was with the actual client for whom the presentation will ultimately be given.
• Communicate! People will respect you for scheduling cautiously. Letting them know you want to meet at 9:00 a.m. instead of 3:30 because you’ll be fresher and more effective serves everyone in the long run.
• Stick to your guns. Your integrity, not to mention your productivity, is at stake when you are asked to change plans for someone else’s convenience. Unless the matter is absolutely critical, stick to the schedule you created.

Step 4: Assess the Situation
Use every day as an opportunity to strive for the schedule that keeps you at your best. At the end of every day, ask yourself: What went well, or how was I able to maintain the schedule I set? What didn’t go well, or what knocked me off track? What do I want change or do differently tomorrow? By creating as efficient a schedule as possible each day and assessing the results, you practice a routine that will soon feel natural and easy.

Step 5: Go Easy On Yourself
As you put your plan into place, remember your ideal schedule is just that: an ideal. This is not about perfection. It’s neither practical nor healthy to set up an unattainable ideal and then berate yourself for not achieving it. The key is to remember what the ideal is for—in this case, helping you plan based on what’s most efficient and effective for you.

Working with your calendar this way is a key to efficiency. Too often, we become slaves to our schedules instead of creating schedules that work for us. By identifying your most efficient patterns, mapping out your ideal, making it real, assessing the situation, and going easy on yourself as you put your plan into place, you can tighten your schedule and become your most productive, most efficient you.

Joelle Jay, Ph.D., is the owner and president of Pillar Consulting LLC, a leadership development firm in Reno, N.V., specializing in leadership and personal effectiveness. She coaches business leaders and executives in achieving success while maintaining a healthy life balance. She can be reached at Joelle@pillar-consulting.com.

Reprinted with permission from Northern Nevada Business Weekly, December, 2003.