The Importance of a Productive Power Hour

A few months ago at work we started reading Gretchin Rubin’s book, ‘Outer Order, Inner Calm‘. Full disclosure, it’s really not that great. Or is it? Our team can’t decide because the writing comes off as disjointed thoughts yet somehow we are able to glean a little enough for a bi-weekly discussion? Either that or we just don’t want to work for that hour on Friday. Anyway, the point is that I started thinking a lot about mental clutter and how long I let it take up space.

As I have been working through my life reset, I’ve started trying to institute new routines and habits. Ones that make my life a little more productive without feeling like a lot of effort. The main one I wanted to deal with was those tiny things that I avoided doing even though easy. So a few weeks I started doing something about it.

Planing My Productive Power Hour

• The best day for me to devote an hour to this is Sunday. Sunday is now a day to completely set myself up for success during the week. During the week it may not be able to be an hour but 30 minutes. That’s fine, because I am still being productive.
• I take either a mental inventory or write out a list of little things that are bothering me. I absolutely hate how I allow myself to have so many tiny things on my mind that are taking up mental space! The amount of things I’ve put off for months that have taken 15 minutes is just embarrassing.
• Find a podcast that is the same length as the power hour (or half hour) and put on my noise cancelling headphones so I can really concentrate.
• Put my phone away so I don’t see any distractions or notifications.
• Just do it and don’t let yourself get distracted, think about getting a snack or deviating from it. Your entire purpose that hour is being productive.

The concept is so simple. I literally spent three weeks avoiding putting on surface pads on my furniture even though every single time I saw my chairs I thought about how I needed to do that. It’s truly amazing what you can get done in an hour when you aren’t distracted. I had 10 thank you notes to write, three orders to return, clothes to fold and to wipe down my stainless steel appliances (I swear by these by the way) and I got it all done in a hour. Guess how long I had all that on my list? Two weeks before my power hour implementation. I go to bed after my Sunday power hour truly able to rest because I don’t have a to-do list of annoying things that I need to do.

If you want one quick way to feel productive this weekend, try this concept. It’s easy to implement and a great way to get into a productive groove.