My New Productivity Workflow That's Kinda Working

The other day I went to a concert over at a park here in town.

And watching the sound guy work on stage, brought me back to my sound engineering days.

Those NYC clubs I worked at were absolute madness. 

Five to seven bands every single night. 

Fifteen minutes between sets to get one band off and a new band on the stage. 

No room for error whatsoever.

If you ran late, the DJ couldn't start at midnight. And when the DJ couldn't start at midnight, the club owners would lose their minds because that's was their real cash cow.

So I had to come up with my own system to start my shift.

First, getting the stage set up in the exact same order.

Drums, Amps, Mic stands.

Then getting everything plugged in and organized on the soundboard. 

That system for starting each shift was a total game changer. I could immediately lock in and just crush through the night. 

The Agency Reality Check

Fast forward to launching my own agency while juggling two kids.

My old "whatever fire is burning" approach just did not work.

A lot of busy motion but no real progress.

I tried time blocking, which is amazing in theory until someone your kid falls off a chair and needs to go to the hospital for stitches.

So I went back to my sound guy approach. Know exactly how to start my day and exactly what I'm doing.

My Simple 3-Step Morning System:

1. Sit down, notebook open (computer stays closed, Slack off) 

My biggest productivity hack is staying away from email and Slack messages for the first 30 minutes of the day. Avoid it at all costs. You need to organize your thoughts first because otherwise someone's going to pull you where they need to go.

2. Write 3 big things per client + 3 for my agency

I always start by identifying the three most impactful tasks. What is going to actual make progress and move us forward? And typically you know what those are becaus they are the items on your list that make you feel anxious or you dread doing. START WITH THOSE FIRST!

Nothing feels better than crossing those off the list first. It gives me a big boost and powers me through the day. 

3. End-of-day planning for tomorrow

At the end of each day, I spend 5 minutes going through my notebook and writing out tomorrow's list. 

What do I need to do? Any big things that came up? Write it down so I'm ready to go. It makes it way easier to sit down the next day and know exactly where to start. It's always easier when you don't have a blank page to look at.

Sure, fires still pop up. It's not perfect. But right now it's been working for me, so I'm going to stick with this until it stops working.

What's productivity workflow has been working for you lately?

Reply and let me know.

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