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Once you’ve identified your personal productivity style, you want to identify the tools and the systems that are gonna help you be most productive at work. So, we wanna lean into the core thinking styles and the strengths of each preference. And if you look at my book, Work Simply, you will have some very specific tools in terms of very specific apps and some general ideas that can help you structure your workflow.
If you’re a Prioritizer, I would suggest that you really leverage the rules feature and your email platform. And the rules feature is how you automatically prioritize and sort incoming messages. So, for a Prioritizer, you know your priority. So let’s decide once what you wanna do with specific emails. Write the rule and then let the system automate it for you. We’re leaning into your strength of that prioritization, which you do really well, and your preference for using technology to help you streamline your inbox.
The Planner is really organized, so let’s lean into that strength. And one thing to do is batch or group like items. You would group all the phone calls you need to make together. You would group all the emails you wanna send together. You would group all of the editing that you need to do together. So, we’re doing light tasks, which allows you to really get in that flow or that rhythm. And the Planner can go for longer stretches of time. So, it’s a really great effective tool for them to think through their day in terms of light tasks and batch those. And you could even place on your calendar blocks of time to work on very specific types of work.
If you’re an Arranger, so, I would suggest that you use color. Color-code your calendar. Color-code incoming email messages, based on sender or priority. The whole point is we want to use color to provide a visual cue as to what’s important, and what you wanna do next. You might use colored Post-it notes, you might use different colored symbols on your phone. Anything that’s visually going to help you focus and really prioritize is something that’ll work well for you from a task-management as well as from a time-management perspective.
For the Visualizer, I would suggest that you think about time in shorter increments of time. So, instead of working on a task for 30 minutes, maybe you work on it for 15 minutes. And that you create some variety in your workday. So, not just work on the same task all day long, but choose different tasks that you can intersperse throughout your workday. And also novelty and fun is really important for you. That gets you going and that’s gonna help you be more effective and efficient. So, where can you have some fun during your workday? And it might be as simple as watching a silly YouTube video, but that will help recharge you and help you go throughout your workday.