The definition of productivity can be quite simple: achieve the maximum in the minimum amount of time. But in a day filled with 2 jobs (one of each being running my own business), a relationship, friends, family, personal care, hobbies… how do you fit productivity? And when does it become more important than that? When going grocery shopping starts feeling like procrastination, do you loose the boundaries of your personal life to the profit of your professional life? Or are they all just the same?

I read blogs, articles, books… Productivity is key. But productivity needs work. I decided to put myself through a test: follow the rules of productivity and see how far that gets me. There are tips and “how to” all over the internet… so I selected a few of them and I’ll try to apply them, one at a time. Readers are my witness and will hear about the ups and down of productive me!

Most of the self-help out there agree, the first step to productivity is planning. I already consider myself a decently organized person, and I always felt like planning too much would take away from life’s best spontaneous moments… Unless you start planning time for unplanned things… but that sounds sort of wacko, doesn’t it? But let’s be positive here… planning is certainly a good thing at least for the workload:

• Planning this week’s client and networking appointments: checked
• Planning this week’s dance lessons and training: checked
• Planning some office time to work on my client projects: checked
• Planning some time for working out and taking care of myself: checked

What’s left? It seems not much. But when I look at my week, I see a couple free nights to spend time with my man or my friends, and I see a weekend that is not loaded with computer time, but open for a lot of unplanned fun.

Now the next challenge will be to plan my “Office time”. If I read correctly the idea is to start the day by making a list of 1 to 3 goals to achieve that day. Sounds do-able… Let’s try to apply that to my upcoming week and see what the result is.

If you have any tips of your own and productivity secrets that you’re willing to share, please feel free to put them in the comment section. Who knows, I might take your word for it and make it my next productivity step.