Bharath Kumar BalasubramanianJust now·2 min read

2 simple actions that have started me doing more, accomplishing more!

There are a couple of points from my experience that i would like to provide:

1. Push for focus:

Even though i know that there are certain activities that would be beneficial to me, i continued putting them off for later citing silly reasons and getting busy with not-so-important tasks. There are always a crazy number of items on the task list at any time owing to the nature of our work and responsibilities held, but understanding that multi-tasking sometimes hurts more than help enables us to focus.

I have now started utilising the Pomodoro technique (GET STARTED — ) helps you perform work in bite sized chunks of 25 minutes and all you have to do is ensure focus for the 25 minutes. Take each task and assign it to one sitting and see how far you go — you will be surprised at the results. Usually while multi-tasking we tend to make a little progress in many directions but using this you can achieve a great deal of progress in the direction/task chosen.

More focus = More Progress!

Let me draw a simple diagram to show you what i mean:

The progress has been fun that i end up repeating the cycle at least 3 times!

2. Stop aiming for perfection:

I used to think a lot for anything i created, be it a presentation or a report or even planning an event. I would get unnecessarily bogged with details and many a time the planning would take so much time that the execution would suffer.

Drafts after drafts, crossing the Ts and dotting the Is. I learn’t that it is best to start at the earliest with a simplistic plan — the nuances and the details can be ensured as we go on. Just start — the rest will be taken care of!

And always know this:
If you are going to allocate 3 hours for doing a task that would ideally take just 30 minutes, you will consume the three hours! Better to assign 20 minutes for such a task and come up with a version that you can improve and dispatch in 5 additional minutes! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law]

I am reminded of this quote from Lao Tzu:

“The Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with a single step”