I was lying in bed one morning staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. Like most mornings, I was trying to plan my day. I listened to a podcast the day before about how to be more productive. The trick was to decide to handle 3 main tasks in a day: the 3 task rule. I scanned through my brain to find these 3 things and finally settled on,
- Finish re-designing the homepage of my website
- Make some sketches for my new collection
- Set up a new ad on Facebook
It took longer than I liked to choose these 3 tasks but now that I was done, my business day was ready to start. I sat down to work on my website when I heard a lot of notification sounds on my phone. I picked it up and it was my cousin. She had an event to attend and wanted a dress to wear. She had sent me over 10 pictures of dresses she liked and wanted to make similar ones. We chat for a bit and finally settled on a design I made for another cousin of ours some months ago.
I went back to the website but in less than 10 minutes one of my vendors called to discuss something. It was nearing noon and task 1 hadn’t been done yet. I was beginning to get anxious. More and more distractions came and went to the extent that I wasn’t really interested in task one anymore so I moved on to doing the sketches. To reduce the amount of distraction I decided to use good old paper and pen. It worked! In no time at all task 2 was done.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for task 3. I picked up my kids from school in the afternoon and all productivity went out the window. I was so exhausted after we were done with bathtime and called it a day. When my husband got home I told him I could only do 1 out of my 3 essential tasks of the day. He smiled and said once I did other things those could be my important tasks. I smiled when he said this because he was right. Helping my cousin with her dress, discussing business with my vendors, taking orders, and chatting with customers was important too! The 3 task rule is cool but I have learned to be flexible and not beat myself up when I can’t finish them. What do you think?
