When it comes to solving productivity problems, I think we go around it the wrong way. We tend to think that an app or a software can help us solve the problem.

What you need to do to solve your productivity conundrums is to really have clarity what’s stopping you from being productive (diagnosing the problem) and finding a tool that will solve it.

Recently, my workflows at work changed, and my productivity stumbled. This is the method I used to solve it:

Diagnosing the problem and the solution I need

Problem 1: Each time I use the browser-based Jira, I get cognitively drained.

• I seem to forget why I’m at a tab, especially when I switch tabs.
• I have too many tabs open and finding the right tab seem to drain me. With each wrong tab opened, I get more muddled.

Solution: While I can’t completely avoid using browser-based apps, I can reduce the amount of context switching I do. Part of my problem is that I have to transfer information from Jira apps to the Work Log document I created. There’s a lot of context switching in that regard. So, what I did was to reduce this manual work by using special add ons and building a system that avoids too much manual transfer of information.

Problem 2: When the week starts, I have a hard time picking off what’s happening with my projects. That’s because the information is scattered in many Jira tickets.

• Getting that information is cumbersome; I have to open a ticket individually to understand the context and last update. It’s rich with information.
• I created a “work log” document where I detail what’s happening with each project so I can quickly get caught up. It has been very helpful, but it has been getting difficult to update the page as it is now getting too bogged down and buggy due to the amount of information on it. I wish we could use a simple text file instead!

Solution: I created a Trello board (for myself). While the team continues to use the work log, and I continue to update it, having this Trello board just releases a lot of my stress as I can quickly grasp at a glance the status of each ticket. Somehow, reading a very long document with a lot of text was stressing me out, and I came to dread updating the page due to its bugginess. (I’d type something, and sometimes the page will zip back to the top and I have to restart all over again. Sometimes my cursor would disappear on the screen or the page will freeze. Such a pain!)

Problem 3: I get inputs from far too many sources: chat, email, meetings, casual conversations. Instead of having a dozen inboxes, I need a good way to funnel them into one inbox.

Solution: I have turned my work email into the single source inbox. I have also added the Gmail to Trello add-on so that I can turn emails into cards.

The good thing about Gmail is that it also contains my chat messages, so I really don’t need to context switch so much. I can also send chat items to chat to turn into Trello cards. Although it’s not perfect, it’s helping me a lot and has reduced the amount of context switching I do.

Methodology

Here’s how my productivity workflow looks like right now.

Daily

1. Morning: Go to my email inbox. Create cards from emails that have tasks for me.
2. In Trello, add labels to tasks and shift them to the correct column.
3. 5. Use a notebook to jot down any random task that comes my way.
4. At the end of each day, check if there are any tasks in notebook or email inbox. Turn them into Trello cards if any.

Weekly

1. In Trello, write the tasks in the “what to do this week” column in the notebook at the start of each week.
2. In the notebook, create a tentative weekly plan and assign the tasks to specific days.
3. Adjust the plan as the week progresses.