When starting with a new productivity goal, we often expect from ourselves, something that's entirely alien to human nature - that, irrespective of our body's responses, we're constantly able to attack our day's plans with the same zeal, zest and energy throughout the day. Most of us who started on a sunny day with the motivation to blast their productivity through the roof, started with dumping tasks and plans on every second of the day, and then watched helplessly as the scheduled stuff came, but the body didn't respond with the same energy, or if our attention went into scrolling through some extremely relatable memes on IG.
Productivity is a function of Time, Energy and Attention, all of which, we have in finite availability. Think of it like money - if you only have a 100 bucks, you'd rather spend 90 of it on what's going to help the most in your survival - food, water and clothing, rather than buying a Netflix subscription. Similarly, the best of our Time, Energy and Attention has to be devoted to the tasks that are the most meaningful to us, from which, we hope to derive the maximum output.
And that's why, the name of this article - ProductiviTEA - the TEA are like caffeine. The optimal usage of the TEA can give you a boost in your life.
So, how do you ensure that the best of your TEA goes into your most important tasks? And how can Routine help you in your journey?
Tracking your TEA#
You can only improve if you know where you are lacking. Tracking your Time, energy and attention throughout the day will give you insights on what are your peak moments, and thus, how you can leverage those.
Routine's essence, is its calendar-drag-and-drop, and you can utilize this core feature to track your traits, for a week.
To do that, schedule a task every waking hour on the Routine calendar. This task can be an actual work task, or just be anything that you intend to do at that particular time, including watching TV, or propping your feet onto the table and staring at the ceiling. You just need to track what you're doing at that time.
Double click on a task to open it as a doc, and add two points - Energy and Attention
For each hour, track your energy level out of 100. It may be tough to quantify it at first, but after a few trials, you'll be to able to put in a number relative to what you put in the past.
Also, for each hour, try and track how many times you felt your attention wandering from what you were meant to do in the past hour. You need not keep a strict count of this - a rough approximation works, to begin with.
Follow this ritual for about a week, and you'll begin to notice some patterns - Your energy and attention levels are high at certain times of the day. For early morning birds, it's usually the morning hours, likewise for night owls. These reflect what's called your Biological Prime Time. Note, manually enforced energy and attention like caffeine induced, pressure of deadlines, do not count here. Your BPT is based on your natural body clock, and your habits - when you're naturally the most prone to attention and action. During these BPT high times, perform your most important tasks, usually the ones that you're highly likely to procrastinate on.
At your worst BPT, schedule tasks that require the least bit attention, such as tracking emails.
Thus, by actively managing your BPT, you can get more done, without forcing your body