Yes I will say on many occasions “I’m a busy mum” or “today’s been non-stop”. But I have come to realise being busy does not mean I am being very productive. Just as being productive doesn’t mean I can’t have a rest! Now this last part has really taken me a while to get my head around too, but I’ve got there.

Definitions

Productive – achieving a significant amount or result

Busy – occupied with or concentrating on a particular activity or object of attention

Life interpretations

As you can see from the simple definitions above, being busy relates to a preoccupation in an activity, whereas productivity is getting results. Keeping busy is very easy to do; we all get side-tracked and can become focused on something that we lose hours on (such as social media) and claim it’s importance to our daily life.

So how do you turn busy into productive?

This has been one of my goals for this year, and I feel like I am slowly making real headway with making productivity a more dominant feature in my day!

I actively review my tasks on a daily, and half daily basis. This involves a check at the start of my day to ensure my current task list is up to date. And then normally another check at lunch time (especially on a work day), followed by an evening round up.

Taking the time to ensure I am focusing on the most important tasks at hand have been key to my productiveness. I have tried various different “to do” lists and have found the best system for me is as follows:

I list my main tasks for any given day in my diary. These are my top priorities and I keep them short and sweet. They are elements that ideally I want to have completed that day, and do my very best to ensure this happens. I then have another list which is messy and to many people would make no sense.

With this list I make sure I start a new list each time. I do this because it gives my mind clarity into what I still have left to do and then I can prioritise effectively, ensuring the most important tasks are completed first.

Another element of my productiveness, which is currently new to me and I am still test-running; I am starting to keep a success list, whereby I have a list with all my completed tasks, as a way of showing myself what can be achieved by focusing and keeping myself productive not busily distracted.