Work Productivity

I've been very busy at work that I got to thinking that maybe, it's not really just about me having a ton of work, but maybe, I'm just not managing the tasks well enough to still be productive? Is it really too much work? Or is it my approach to work that's driving me mad?

I've been thinking about this for a couple of nights already. Am I over allocated? Or am I just slow when it comes to work? Many "negative" reasons that's causing the dive into my productivity. But as I ponder more, I realized that perhaps it's my approach to work that's really something that needs to be re assessed.

For instance, I pondered on what was recently a crazy Monday. I had a total of a half day spent just juggling back to back meetings (I hate meetings!). What happened was, I worked on this one thing, and then another request comes along and then I go look at it instead. And then while this isn't even finished yet, another discussion needs to be addressed and by then, it's the end of the day and I didn't have anything finished.

In light of this, I've decided to do something different - focus on one task at a time. Let the others wait for a bit until you finish a certain task. I started this last Tuesday night (after another jam packed day). I worked during the wee hours of the morning to finish a couple of things just to catch up on work. How I did it was to just open up one of the task at a time. Finish it off (mind you, I didn't even open gtalk!) and then close those apps, then move to the next. I actually got a lot done in a span of 2 hours. Maybe it was because there were no distractions but nonetheless, at least I finished something!

For example yesterday, I got pretty much the whole afternoon yesterday to code! Finally!

I will observe in the next few days, or even weeks, as to how this approach allows me to get more things done. Maybe multi tasking is not something for me. Trying to do too many things at once won't get you to the finish line. It might just even slow you down further.