Friday Afternoon Tips

Just a few quick ideas that I hope will allow you to have a better weekend because you are not thinking about the previous week:

1. Schedule 15-30 mins before the end of the day
2. Close your door or find a place where you can’t be interrupted by people/phone/email
3. List out anything you are working on right now that will take you more than one step/action to complete in separate columns on a sheet of paper
4. Under each column write down anything you can think of relating to that particular topic. You can trigger your memory with:
   1. all the notes you scribbled throughout the week
   2. the sticky-notes you made
   3. all the lingering emails/voicemails
   4. review your calendar, mentally go through the meetings to trigger any thoughts or conversations you had
5. Once you’ve collected all of these notes into one location, trash all of the stickies/emails/voicemails/etc., just get rid of them. You don’t need them any more because you have them all in one place.

The idea is to get it all out of your head into a trusted place so that you aren’t bothered by thoughts of things you have to do next week or loose-ends you need to tie up. None of this is original, have a look at David Allen’s Getting Things Done.