Today I had a thought, those that are good at what they do are often described as being "a few steps ahead of the rest", and realized that what if we could also do that in our own lives. Would our productivity improve? I decided to try it this morning.
Normally when I wake up I do my work out and then afterwards is a fair router procedure of showering, making breakfast, eating, reading some news sites, preparing for my ride to work, and then leaving home. This normally takes me about 45 minutes, however lately it has taken more for reasons I were not fully aware of. A probable cause is me not being mindful enough about the things I do thereby spending more time than necessary on each task.
Since the tasks are mundane I could quite easily take a shower while thinking about what I would do after I got out, such as: taking which items out of the fridge that I would need for making breakfast. When I was preparing breakfast I would think about taking supplements while the food was cooking and getting the coffee machine running. I went on like this for pretty much all of my tasks. Even when I sat down to eat I thought about the sequence of events that followed such as washing up and getting dressed for my ride.
The end result was I managed to take about 35 minutes to do all of my normal morning routine. A great improvement in time. Furthermore I did not feel very rushed going out the door although I still managed to leave with great efficiency. I also managed to take care of things I forgot really fast. The mental list in my head simply shifted down and allowed room for quickly completing the unexpected; such as writing a shopping list.
The lesson here, I believe, is that by planning ahead in an almost micro-management kind of way we can stop ourselves lingering on tasks that do not really matter and really fly through boring activities so that we have more time to do what we really want.
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