'Theme' Every Work Day for a More Productive Week

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Scheduling your day is an important part of being productive. You can (and should) prioritize your to-dos by timeliness and time box your way to a jam-packed, detailed schedule, but there’s more to time management than that. You should also consider dividing up not only your day, but your week overall, to maximize productivity. The trick here is to theme your workdays.

Instead of jumping from task to task on any given day, try grouping all the similar ones together and parking them on a specific day, when your schedule allows. By putting similar tasks together on the same day, you’ll stay in that “zone” longer, focusing only on what needs to be done in it. If all the things you have to do have something in common, you’ll stay focused on the central theme of the day’s work as you move from task to task.

How to divvy up themed days for productivity

First, start by thinking about why you want to do what you're doing. I don't mean you need to get all philosophical, but adding a "why" to your to-do list is valuable. You don't just want to clean your house because you have to, but because you want a safe, comfortable space or because your mom is coming to say for a week and you want her to feel cozy (and not harp on you about any lingering dust). You don't just want to finish your big project at work because it was assigned to you, but because you want to grow in your career, stay employed, or get a promotion. If thinking this way is a stretch for you, try setting SMART goals around your tasks. SMART goals are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound (in accordance with the acronym) and they help you stay focused on why you're doing what you're doing, as well as how you're going to do it.

Set these intentions so you feel like you have something to work toward. That's where the daily themes come in. If you complete similar tasks over the course of one day, you are striving for an intention—meeting whatever goal you’ve set for that day’s theme—and staying focused on it from task to task.

Say you have a big project at work. Here's how your first three days could look: Consider getting all administrative-type work done on Mondays. Designate Mondays for responding to emails, sending out new ones, taking calls, or scheduling meetings. Make sure you use this day to request any resources, details, or answers you need from others involved in the project, so you have everything you need for the following days. Creative activities, like brainstorming or designing, could be handled Tuesday, while Wednesday could be for research.

You could also theme your days by project, according to Leonard Alexandru, an engineering director at Deloitte who has written about the value of themed days. Instead of dedicating time every day to multiple projects, consider assigning each project its own specific day of the week for work, so a project that requires a big focus on management should take up a whole day while one that requires you to focus on marketing, communications, sales, or whatever else should be on another.

Why this works (and what to keep in mind)

I do this around my apartment: One day is for cleaning my bedroom, the other is for the living room, and another is for the kitchen. It is that simple—and broadly applicable beyond your job. Hell, if you do strength training, you probably already do arm day, back day, leg day, etc. You wouldn't do a lat pulldown on leg day because it wouldn't make sense to exhaust your whole body, nor divert your focus from your glutes and quads.

The reason it works is the same reason divvying up gym days works. When you are focused entirely on one thing, you do better at it, which makes you more productive at it. When you throw everything into the metaphorical blender, you lose that focus. Plus, the stress of figuring out what to do at a given time is gone, leaving you open to just get to work. You can "eat the frog" (that is, tackle your biggest task first) or work off a system like 1-3-5, which calls on you to take care of one major task, three medium-sized ones, and five smaller ones. With a themed grouping, you don't have to decide what those are; you just go.

Try setting each day’s theme as an all-day event on whatever calendar software you use, so you’ll have a reminder at the top of the page about what to focus on each day. Just knowing your Thursdays are for client meetings, for instance, relieves you of the anxiety of deciding what to prioritize that day or when to schedule those meetings. It eliminates decision fatigue and keeps you on-task without you having to think too hard about what activity should go in what slot during your busy week.

Obviously, a necessary or urgent meeting could crop up on a day that isn't Thursday. It's fine to take it, of course, but try to keep the general framework of the themed days whenever you can.

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