Productivity in the workspace

One Big Thing

In the mornings, I come to the office, make my coffee and find a nice spot to read. My inbox is filled early in the morning with different blogs and newsletters for me to catch up on.

This one particular morning I came across a blog by InVision called “One Big Thing: a simple way to do more by planning less” by John Zeratsky, design partner at Google Venture.

It was a blog about productivity which immediately gained my interest.

To give a brief background of how I manage my daily productivity, I must say that it is based off my to-do list.  About 30 minutes before my day is done, I take the time to reflect what I did that day and jot down in my notebook what tasks I need to complete for the next day.

Typically, I have a myriad of smaller tasks which at times takes up the length of my notebook-but checking off that “done” box is ever so satisfying!

Now…

As I am reading this blog, I find myself directly in John’s shoes. Creating a to-do list, but not truly feeling like I’ve put a big dent in my work by the end of the week.

So to test his idea, I took a stab at creating my “One Big Thing.”

This is how it looks:

I grab a post it note or write in my note book one big task for the day and focus on achieving that task. After that, I have three medium sized tasks and maybe a couple small ones just in case I get through all the medium ones.

This structure allowed me to knock out the most significant and time consuming tasks that made me feel that my week was fully productive.

I can happily say that I’ve fully implemented the “One Big Thing” into my day to day work schedule.

Try it out + see for yourself! Keep on redefining.

Cheers,

Samantha Nguyen