Sunday – The Sabbath Day!

On this blog, I keep harping about productivity, efficiency, optimization, et al. But today, I will go over to the other end and say:

 "Spend an entire day away from your machine!"

 Before getting down to the actual concept, here's some personal background.

As an unashamed workaholic (and a bachelor until last year), I was totally hooked up to my machine (a laptop) for 12 to 15 hours a day… often more, but never less. I used the machine to do office work, to read e-books, to listen to music, to watch movies, to play games, to surf the net, and so on. It was great fun.

However, after a couple of years of doing this, I began to feel pangs of a strange dissatisfaction. Life seemed dull and monochromatic.

One fine day, HP, a friend of mine, suggested a solution: Stay away from your laptop for a day. Just don’t touch it.

Fine, I said... I won't work on Sunday, but surely I can use the laptop to watch a movie or to read an e-book?

No, said HP... Total ban on the machine for an entire day (and night).

I was aghast. What was I supposed to do then?

The first time I tried this, I ended up getting frustrated and booting up the machine within a couple of hours.

So, the next Sunday, I left the laptop in my office locker.

With no access to it, mind slowly began to work out the alternatives. I went out and bought a couple of newspapers. Next, I called up a few friends. Even had a long lazy bath followed by a nap in the afternoon!

Over the next few weeks, I had not just adjusted myself to this new routine, but began to actually enjoy it!

So, what is this all about?

The idea is pretty simple: Let go of your machine for a day, and relax, chill out. Spend time with your family, friends, and relatives. Spend time on your hobbies and interests. Do everything and anything that is not related to your profession.

Some points to be considered:

• Note that I refer to machine. As a software professional, my machine is my laptop. Your "machine" or "tool" will differ as per your profession.
• I have chosen Sunday to implement idea; you can choose any day as per your convenience.
• When I say don't work on your off-day, you should exercise your own judgement. For example, during a software release phase, it is common for the project team to be occasionally slogging over a weekend in the office to meet the delivery deadlines. In this case, you can compensate yourself later  by taking an extra day off.
• Care should be taken that the relaxed mood of the off-day doesn't spill over to the next day. If you have been reading a book, force yourself to keep it down. Partying till late night on a Sunday night is no excuse to walk in late into office on Monday.

How does it help?

Taking a day off keeps you relaxed through the next week. You can take care of backlog activities to be done at home.
Your family will be most delighted and comforted with the assurance that you will really be taking them out to a dinner. Your friends and relatives will know for sure that they can always meet you or visit you on a Sunday.

But what about the productivity stuff?
Believe it, this idea actually makes you more productive throughout the week. If you’re a movie buff, the knowledge that you will only be watching the latest flick on Sunday takes the thought off your mind and helps you focus on the work in hand.

Also, taking an entire day off makes you look forward to getting back to office on Monday and hitting the work. At least, this happens to me!

The 3 productivity tools you need

You want to streamline your work, be more productive, and be more efficient. You take a look around and find productivity tools and techniques galore, enough to intimidate you back into the un-managed ways.

So, what is the easiest -- and probably the best! -- way to go about getting started with getting things done in a systematic way, without investing too much time and effort into myriad approaches?

From personal experience, I would say just three tools are sufficient to do the trick:

1. To-Do list
2. Checklist 
3. Reminder mechanism

Let's see how to use these...

•  THE TO-DO LIST: WHAT to do A good to-do list should consist of two parts. One part should have the task-lists. Tasks are the chores that you need to repeatedly perform with some regular frequency, such as sending out a status report every Friday, or, washing your car every 15 days.
  
  More details about creating task-lists can be read here. The second part of the to-do list should have action items specific for the particular day (or week), such as a meeting with software analyst or attending a wedding reception at 9 PM.
  
  Tools: 
  For the office work, I used StickyPad earlier. But now I use the Tasks feature of Microsoft Outlook. It integrates nicely with e-mail and calendar features (see below) and has almost all the features one could ask for. 
  For personal work, I extensively use the Notes and To-Do List features of my cellphone.
  
  Success Mantra: The key is to have specific, actionable items on your to-do list. For example, "I want to reduce weight" is merely a wish; you need to convert it to something like "Jogging for 30 minutes every morning from 7 AM to 7:30 AM". Now, this becomes an action-item.
  Some say that the best time to chalk out a to-do list is just before you go to sleep or early in the morning before you set out for the day. Well, I don’t have a specific time to update the to-do list; but just go on adding to it whenever a task presents itself.

•  THE CHECKLIST: HOW to do
  Checklists are a list of items that help you either to perform a task in the best possible manner or to verify if a completed task meets the requirements. Hence, the checklists can basically be of two types: pre-emptive and corrective. For example, a checklist that you use while conducting a software release is a pre-emptive checklist, whereas a code review checklist is a corrective checklist.
  
  I have always been big on checklists, so reading The Checklist Manifesto by Dr Atul Gawande was a comforting feeling!
  
  Tools:
  As of now, I am not using any particular tool to create and manage the checklists. They are mostly scribbled on a paper notepad or saved in MS-Excel.
  
  Success Mantra: 
  The key is to be honest with oneself while using the checklists. It’s a tall order, but you can always try! You need to force yourself to acknowledge that you have skipped some essential steps during a procedure or that your finished work doesn’t satisfy all the expectations. This will not only help you brace yourself for any glitches ahead but will also –hopefully – forewarn you against making the same errors again in future.

• REMINDERS: WHEN to do
  Most of us use reminders. The hitch is that most of us don't really act on them when the alarm goes off, instead preferring to hit the snooze button.
  It helps if you set two reminders for each task, one for any preparatory actions you need to perfrom and the second one for the actual task.
  For example, your buddy's birthday is on 1-September and you wish to get your buddy a present.  Then it's not a good idea to set only one reminder for 1-September. Better set a reminder a week before so that you have sufficient time to go out and buy that gift.
  
  Tools: For office work, I use the Calendar feature of Microsoft Outlook. It integrates nicely with e-mail and Tasks feature (see above) and has almost all the features one could ask for.
  
  For personal work, I use the Calendar as well as Reminders features of my cellphone.
  
  Success Mantra:
  The key here is to make your calendar sacred, something that no one can override… not even you, not without a good reason at least. If you mark a time-slot for studying Linux then hanging out in a mall with friends during that time should be avoided, however tempting it might be.
  
  Of course, you cannot always have things your way. If you mark a Friday evening to watch a football match on TV and your wife informs, “We are visiting my folks today evening”, it would be wise not to insist too much on preserving the integrity of your calendar.

Using these three basic tools in a disciplined way is guaranteed to bring a huge improvement in your productivity and efficiency.