Compound Moves for Ultimate Productivity
At most gyms, if you approach a trainer asking about “compound moves,” you will likely find yourself armed with a pair of weights performing exercises like lunges, deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. These moves that target multiple muscle groups to increase your productivity and reduce time in the gym don’t just have to apply to workouts! I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t jump for joy at the opportunity to have 30 hours in a day (heck, I would settle for one extra hour each day), but in the meantime, I want to show you how you can optimize your productivity and effectiveness to squeeze as much life into every 24 hours as possible. That is, of course, until time machines are invented or people evolve beyond circadian rhythms.
Compound Chores
Housekeeping isn’t at the top of my to-do list, but when push comes to shove and I have to choose between avoiding ants (or worse critters) and reading a book… I choose the former over the latter. I have figured out some nice ways to make it somewhat productive by using services like YouTube when I am pinned to one general spot (dishes, polishing, etc). There are a ton of awesome YouTube channels out there dedicated to productivity tips – I have personally been binge watching Amy Landino’s channel (she has a lot of neat “hacks” and content). If you’re tied up and can’t really be looking somewhere specific or are moving around frequently, there are a lot of podcasts that you can tap into for free: Happier with Gretchen Rubin, HBR Women at Work, and How I Built This with Guy Raz are my current favorites.
If you still crave the format of a book, I highly recommend audible. Each month, you get a credit to use on any book from their vast library and additional books are discounted. I joined in May and have been thoroughly enjoying the ability to take my reading off of the page and into my ears. Audible has enabled me to take more productive walks (as opposed to listening to music) and dare-I-say, adds infinitely more enjoyment to mundane chores like sweeping and room organization. While it doesn’t replace the satisfaction I get from flipping through an actual book, it does make me feel more productive so that even if I can’t sit down and read during the week, I can be “reading” through my ear buds.
Compound Interruptions
Constant daily interruptions are a common hassle in the workplace and once you lose focus, you usually have a hard time regaining focus, especially if your day is filled with periodic distractions. As a leader, it is good to group as many as these interruptions together as possible. Some managers incorporate daily “open door hours” by ensuring that their office is open for any and all questions during those moments. You can also encourage a person you are mentoring or teaching to wait until they have five or more non-urgent questions and make a calendar appointment to see you. Depending on the question, people may find that their question was unimportant or figure out an answer on their own. Being able to group distractions into one bubble will help you keep the bulk of your day focused on value-added tasks and increase your overall productivity.
In the same vein, the more you can group meetings together in a specific chunk of your day, the better you’ll be able to focus during the larger part of your day. While this isn’t always possible when there are multiple attendee schedules at play, you could always utilize a version of the calendar blocking technique and book smaller tasks during the 30 minutes in-between meetings – optimizing large gaps in your schedule for more focus-intensive tasks.
If you know you have to leave the office to grab lunch, is there an errand you can do that would maximize your travel route? Similar to the calendar blocking technique, planning all of your out-of-the-office or out-of-the-home errands in one group can make it easier to focus on the task at hand since you don’t have to worry about remembering – you have it planned! If you have to run to the grocery and to the post office, but they are in opposite directions, is there a grocery store closer to the post office that you may not frequent that would be suitable for your needs? Optimizing your travel routes can result in extra pockets of time throughout the day.
Compound Tools
How many times have you thought of a food item you needed, and then magically remember it right after you get home from the store? Or how about having a great idea for a date, and less than an hour later trying to remember that fantastic plan you wanted to make? While we may not always have a pen and paper around, we most likely do have our phones! Ensuring that we always “write” our ideas down or put a calendar reminder to make plans can save us a lot of heartache later. You can take it a step further with an Alexa-enabled device like the Amazon Echo Show – it’s like having your own personal assistant (for much, much cheaper).
It’s nice to know that when we are in the middle of an activity that we don’t lose insights that pop up in our heads to ensure that we don’t have to make two trips to the grocery store or forget a really insightful idea. Saying to ourselves that “if it’s really important, I will remember it later” is simply not ideal for today’s world where we are running from one obligation to the next.
These are just a few examples on how you can optimize your productivity both at home and at work. You may not always be able to implement these ideas – sometimes you just need to listen to fun music to unwind while cleaning the floors (and that’s okay!) – but the more you can take a mundane activity and add some content of substance to it, the more productive your day will be! What activities could you compound to ensure that you will be most effective every day?