How do you organise your day?

Question

Many of us find it challenging to structure our days amidst multiple demands. One easy way to significantly boost your productivity is by creating 'hard time boxes' and 'soft time boxes'.

A hard time box is a period of time when you are focused on one thing. For work like Emma Sue’s, where she is conducting training sessions or one-to-one coaching, she can’t also be checking her email or writing reports or designing training. Most of her work is contained within hard time boxes and this is excellent for presence and focus.

For many people, much of their workday consists of soft timeboxes: perhaps a long to-do list that could be completed in any order. This means you’re more likely to flit between different tasks alongside dealing with emails all day long.

Even meetings are becoming soft time boxes, especially online, when you can easily have your camera off and only half be present because you’re trying to get something else done at the same time.

If you want to work more effectively and focus, the key is to schedule into your week some hard time boxes of 30 or 45 minutes when you focus just on one task. You’ll be amazed at what a difference this makes to both the quality and efficiency of your work