How do you get stuff done?

When you work for yourself it’s really hard to focus. You could do any number of things (your accounts, scroll Instagram, start a course, have a nap, read that blog, or do your actual work that pays the bills) so how do you choose, and do, what you really need to do?

There’s a certain mania that accompanies being your own boss sometimes and an overwhelming desire to get stuff done amid an endless sea of distractions. According to some new stats that I got sent recently 92% of business owners feel guilty about their work/life balance. I’m not surprised, and there is nothing worse that knowing you could have done stuff quicker / more efficiently and then have work eat into your non-work time.

Most of us started working for ourselves because we wanted choice and freedom, not to work more hours. So, productivity – or getting stuff done – is pretty critical. Here are some of the things I’ve been trying:

The Ivy Lee technique
I first thought this was called the Ivy League technique which sounded hard and put me off. But when I discovered it was actually Ivy Lee after a famous PR guy, my shared surname and profession made me give it a go. Each day you list six and only six things you need to get done that day in order of importance. Then you work through them and only move on to the next when you’ve finished the one before. It’s good for helping you be realistic about what you can get done, and keeping you focused.

Parkinson’s Law
Another one I feel a personal connection to as Parkinson is my pre-married surname (weird huh?). Parkinson’s Law says that work shrinks or expands to fit the time available. So it’s why sometimes deadlines really help or why if you have more people on your team you’ll still always have enough to do. I find this a helpful reminder to put in place no negotiable deadlines, log off properly and create boundaries between work and life, because when you’re the boss and you could in theory be working all the time it’s very easy for work to end up taking longer.

Getting Stuff Done
This is based on David Allen’s book – it’s pretty long, but the TL;DR version is… you’re overwhelmed and like a computer with too many tabs open. You need to properly shut some down before you can work at your optimum level. To do that he recommends a master list where you put everything (from home and life) and use that to refer to. The key is to have just one list and make sure you download everything there and use it to refer back to.

Working in sprints
I’m a firm believer that almost everything that feels too hard can be achieved by removing your phone and setting a timer for 25 minutes. Usually this helps me realised it's procrastination rather than inability slowing me down, and even if you don’t get it all done, you’ve made some progress. I love the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes of focused work followed by a five-minute break) for really hard tasks or 50-minute sprints for more leisurely writing.

The thought of becoming deeply interested in and writing about productivity hacks would have been totally alien to me two years ago, but time is (generally) our most precious commodity so anything that can help maximise it and reduce work/life guilt is worth it in my opinion.