A friend mentioned to me long ago about the OHIO method for not procrastinating and developing better habits. If you are not familiar with it here is an explanation.
Only Handle It Once
If used correctly this can be a very effective way to develop better habits both in life and in your business. There can be some inefficient uses for it. Let me break it down how I have used it in conjunction with other tactics to help me gain more time and get things done.
Those menial tasks like washing a single dish or checking emails. Often we will finish eating a meal and go a put the dishes in the sink, go about doing something else then have to come back to wash those dishes. Using OHIO and something called habit stacking you can reduce the time on that series of tasks to get the dish from dirty to clean.
Putting the dish in the sink is one task and cleaning is another. When done separately they take up more time and require you to be at the sink. Whereas, if you instead remove the part where you put the dish in the sink and just wash it it will be done.
With checking emails it is the same concept. Instead of bouncing back and forth between tasks and other things that need your attention, and coming back to it multiple times. It just gets done. This may require some more planning like checking email for instance. Dedicating certain times to email during the day and only focusing on that will clear your inbox in no time AND give you the time to complete other things that are probably more important to running your business.
Benefits
Mental space is opened up from the tasks that are still lingering like the dirty dishes in the sink or the inbox. You aren’t subconsciously having to remember it and the glance at the sink isn’t reminding you it needs to get done. Clearing the mental clutter gives more space for heavier thinking. Focusing on that one thing at that time pays off and often is much faster. Time is lost whenever you have to switch tasks.
Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.
“Multitasking: Switching costs” – American Psychological Association
Time-boxing is another tool that can help with structuring those menial tasks into specific blocks of time where you only handle that seemingly endless task once. I think that when you start thinking this way you may start finding other ways to be more efficient. Like planning errands on a route out and back from home. Or bringing things downstairs every time you go downstairs.