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productivity, ritual, hacks, reviews

Can a Productivity Ritual Help You Get More Done? Image courtesy of Gualberto1070 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are these emails ending up in your Promotions folder on Gmail? Here’s how to get them out. I just discovered that this post was delivered as scheduled. My sincere apologies! 

This is Week 24 of a Year of Living Productively

This week I tested whether a productivity ritual (as described by Simple Productivity Blog) of preparing for each work session mentally with prayer and physically by gathering materials would help me get things done. Scroll to the bottom of last week’s post for more details.

How a Productivity Ritual Saved My Sanity This Week

  • Gave me a sense of peace. I used to be careful to pray before I wrote. This week I realized I haven’t been and I haven’t enjoyed the focus and flow I used to have.
  • Helped me work more efficiently. I remembered to grab my blogging notebook, for example, and was able to get more posts written in less time than I have in weeks.

How a Productivity Ritual Made Me Crazy This Week

  • Not conducive to much of the week’s work. I hosted two large parties and a house guest this week. There wasn’t a simple way of “gathering materials” for this, though I made plenty of trips to the store! I’ve been going strong all day long and had rare occasions when I felt like a new work period was starting for which the ritual would be effective.
  • Kept forgetting to use it. I haven’t kept the usual schedule this week and this habit hasn’t been developed, so I forgot about using it. When I did remember, I wasn’t sure how to use it for the work in front of me.

Did a Productivity Ritual Help Me Get Things Done?

Yes, when it was appropriate. When I sat down at my desk to work on my blog, I loved it! Most likely I was intuitively using this ritual as I got everything together I needed for entertaining this week. I could have benefitted from it more had I been more efficient in gathering cleaning supplies and more intentional about praying before activity changes. It’s something I want to continue to do in the future without trying to shoe-horn it into all of my work.

**UPDATE**

I still use productivity rituals to good effect. I make sure I’m comfortable, check my computer, and pray before writing.

make it happen in 10 minutes

The Productivity Approach I’ll Be Using for Week 25


This week I’ll be testing Make it Happen. Make it Happen in Ten Minutes a Day: The Simple, Revolutionary Method for Getting Things Done {affiliate link} doesn’t offer a revolutionary new approach to getting things done. Rather Lorne Holden offers motivation for getting just about anything done 10 minutes at a time.

The concept. I’ve already tested Pomodoros and found them to be beneficial. However, I was working for 50-minute periods. I already use ten-minute cleaning periods with the kids and they work. But I haven’t been using these short work periods that overcome resistance and procrastination in other areas of my life. For example, I have some paper scrapbooking kits that I keep saving for “when I have time.” You and I both know I won’t get to them with that criterion. This week, I’m going to spend ten minutes a day on them.

The other concept explained in Make it Happen that I was very excited about was making a list of things we want to create and things we want to conquer. This dichotomy really resonates with me. The labels we use for our work are very powerful. Imagine having a “to conquer” list vs. a “thankless” list. This week I want to create two scrapbook pages using a kit and I want to conquer selling things on eBay and Amazon. I already feel relieved thinking about working on this just 10 minutes a day.

If you’d like to join me this week, here’s what you do. Buy and read Make it Happen in Ten Minutes a Day {affiliate link} if you want to, but it’s not required. Choose a create and a conquer task for the week and work on them just ten minutes a day each. If you can’t afford twenty minutes a day, choose just one of these tasks to focus on.

Click here to see how my week of 10 Minutes a Day went.

You can now subscribe to productivity posts separate from the rest of Psychowith6 content here.

If you’ve tried a Productivity Ritual to increase your productivity, please comment. I will no longer be including polls.

Here are the links to the productivity hacks I’ve tried so far:

A Year of Living Productively

Week 1: Paper To-Do List

Week 2: Covey’s Quadrants

Week 3: Routines

Week 4: Paper Planner

Week 5: SMEMA

Week 6: Guilt Hour

Week 7: Envision Ideal Day

Week 8: Do it Tomorrow

Week 9: Pomodoro

Week 10: Time Warrior

Week 11: Scheduling

Week 12: The Repeat Test

Week 13: Personal Kanban

Week 14: Eat That Frog

Week 15: Vacation

Week 16: David Seah’s 7:15AM Ritual

Week 17: Another Simple and Effective Method

Week 18: Daily/Weekly/Monthly To-Do List

Week 19: Ultimate Time Management System

Week 20: Getting Things Done

Week 21: Time Blocking

Week 22: Morning Ritual

Week 23: Beat the Week