Productivity Booster

Welcome to a series where I share a few experiments I have done with my day to day lifework and illustrate how it has helped me to be in a better place.

I feel that however good you are or however bad you think you are, positive reinforcement will help you get better. And the need to define such methods and to share them is something I realised only after seeing the response of a 30 students group for a talk I gave. It made me think about how an accidental self-discovered tool could in fact be a great technique for others too.

So what's this tool? It's a simple routine that will boost the productivity of whatever you might be doing or wanting to do.

The routine needs a few simple things to be done to start working

• Take any piece of paper you think is large enough for the activity you want to target (academics, workouts, etc)
• Draw horizontal lines (each line will be representing a day)
• Draw vertical lines to make columns.
• Let each column denote a set amount of time (15min, 30min, 45min, 1 hr, etc) and leave 2 blank columns (one for date and other for total)

Now with all this in place, stick this paper in a place where your eye frequently visits ( I am pretty sure there is such a place in your roomhouse be it above the wardrobe, next to the mirror or the wall you see as soon as you enter your room) and start marking the respective column every time you finish a part of the activity. (maybe you felt like you were done for the day or maybe you felt like taking a break) At the end of the day tally the row and write the final sum in the last column and that's it. That's it, this is the whole technique to boost productivity.

If you are wondering how this might possible boost productivity, here’s how I think it works:

• Everytime you finish something you mark it, so there's tangible proof of you putting in those hours.
• And as every day passes and you see the cumulative time you have put in, that alone pushes you to subconsciously to do more of it!
• Any drop in total time will be evidently visible, this might get you thinking about what you did that day which you didn't before, something which is basic but most of us miss (introspection)

That's all folks, have a great time and feel free to experiment and personalise it even more, I would love to hear your success stories!