4 Personal Productivity Problem Areas – TPW385

I think sometimes people assume that since I host a podcast about productivity I’m always on top of things and productive. This is not true, though. I do have systems and routines in place and can be pretty productive, but I also have my problem areas. This week I share my current top 4 productivity problem areas and my plans for overcoming them. Tackling our productivity problem areas Lately I’ve been feeling dissatisfied and even a little overwhelmed at times, so I spent some time thinking about why, trying to identify where those feelings are coming from. I came up with 4 problem areas where I need to improve. Then I went on the hunt for inspiration and ideas on how to get a better handle on these areas. In this week's episode I share my current top 4 personal productivity problem areas, along with some steps I plan to take to improve.  1. Too much communication coming at me (email, text messages, Facebook messages, Teams, . . .) There are multiple sources of communication to keep track of. Many of them are spam or unwanted sales emails from some vendor I once bought something from or “business” texts (either clients or personal business like reminders from doctors, vendors, etc.). On top of those, I have to keep track of the chat functions in Teams for work or Facebook messaging. I know I’m not alone in this. Scrolling through the TPW Community FB group I noticed a post by Loni: Hi, community! One obstacle to my productivity is information coming to me via text message. (I have a Samsung phone and use Message + as my texting app.) When I need to follow up with an email, I mark it as unread and follow up when I have time. I can't do that with text messages, so I often forget to loop back on those questions/requests/dates. Any suggestions or hacks? A couple of people responded with ideas, which I'll mention below.  Problems with all this "incoming": Keeping track of them all  The constant interruption of focused work time  Distraction by guilt for those communications I can’t get back to in a timely fashion -- as of today my iPhone Mail app shows 3,086 unread emails combined in a Gmail account and a Yahoo account (this doesn’t include the Outlook account for my law firm emails). Even knowing a huge majority of those are unwanted solicitations or marketing newsletters, I feel a level of stress seeing that number. What will I do to address this problem area? Reset: Create an archive or “to process” folder and move everything out of my inbox into that folder. Schedule 15 minutes twice a day to triage emails. I will delete spam emails, reply to those that will take 2 minutes or less, and file/schedule time to process emails. When the time is up, I'll close out of email and the rest will have to wait until the next scheduled session. (Note: I can’t do this for my work email, because the nature of my work requires me to stay available via email most days. Schedule a time to create rules for sorting through certain types of work emails. I will be more consistent about scheduling times when I shut down email for an hour or whatever time I can, so I can focus on work that requires concentration. One article I read while looking for ideas suggests creating a “waiting” folder for emails you’re waiting for action on someone else for. This can work as long as you have scheduled times to check that email and follow up where necessary. On the issue of texts, in response to Loni’s post, Marty suggested screenshotting the text message and emailing it to yourself. Amy reminded us that you can press and hold a text me...