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And from personal experience, my ability to context-switch from a conversation in my team chat app to writing an article is abysmal when my brain is fried. We like to think we're good at multitasking, but we're not. It's better to underpromise and overdeliver when your brain has checked out. If you're feeling burned out, now's not the time to get ahead. I even have a filter in my to-do app called 'things I need to get done right meow' so I can keep track. I've found this system helpful for me because my anxiety brain often can't prioritize anything that's not explicitly defined. When I'm anxious or depressed, I only focus on action steps with a deadline. On a good day, action steps are tackled first, then you go through the backburner items if you have time, and you can mostly ignore the references unless you decide to block out time once a week to read them. References are supplementary stuff that might inform your tasks, such as project documents, internal blogs, or anything that requires you to take time to read. If you don't do these, you're holding things up.īackburner items are those to-dos that are important but don't necessarily block the work you're doing. I'm a hot mess, so I figure it could work for me.Įssentially, you sort your tasks into three buckets:Īction steps are the tasks you have to do to move something forward. The book specifically targets creatives who generate great ideas but are a hot mess when they try to execute. Personally, I use a prioritization framework from the book Making Ideas Happen.

You don't need a complicated prioritization strategy. In the same vein, how do you prioritize the tasks you've decided on when your brain is fighting yourself? Keep it simple. Everything else I need to do is optional, even if it means the dishes will pile up. For me, I'm lucky if I manage to shower, eat something, and show up at work when my anxiety is high or depression slows me down. Of course, sometimes you won't even get those two things done. But knocking out two out of three tasks is a 66 percent completion rate. If you think of it from a percentages perspective, completing two of 10 tasks is a 20 percent completion rate. Whenever we do quarterly planning at Zapier, our managers emphasize committing to fewer things if it means we'll accomplish more of what we set out to do. Or at the very least, you commit to less. However, the number of tasks you can juggle decreases significantly when you're burned out, depressed, or stressed. There are all sorts of systems for prioritizing your work. Instead of fighting your brain, here are some tips you can try to be kinder to yourself and get at least one thing done. But I've also had anxiety and depression for 13 years, so I know when I'm in the sunken place, very few strategies help me get by.Īll the productivity tricks in the world can't help when your brain is fighting your best instincts. I experiment and test out many of the solutions I recommend.

ZAPIER AIRTABLE TODOIST HOW TO

I write articles on how to use Zapier to automate work and improve your productivity. My chest hurts, and all I can think about is changing all 231 of my passwords because if I don't, something bad will happen. I can't formulate the words for a topic I was excited about just a few days prior. There's a deadline looming, and instead of being fueled by the time crunch as usual, I'm staring at a blank Google Doc.

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