Thinking up solutions

List on Sunday

Everything is a bit of a race. But races need a defined beginning and end. Your work plans can be broken down into weekly chunks where you set a particular day as your starting point. For most people in Bangladesh, Sunday is a good time. It's relaxed and you can sit back for a few minutes to settle on precisely scheduling tasks that only you can and must do. Which brings us to scheduling.

Schedule

Setting schedules for particular activities brings your whole job into a more manageable sequence of events. I have set Wednesday mornings for a half hour with my boss about updates. On Saturday mornings I set aside an hour in the early morning for analysing and sorting out my marketing strategies for my family business. These are things I have to do and once they are scheduled, they fall into a pattern of necessity. Avoid looking into Facebook or checking emails during such scheduled tasks.

Think less

Counterintuitive yet true. It's one thing to thoroughly understand a problem. It is another to keep thinking about it as if it is your high school crush. Over thinking can lead to productivity loss. An associate of mine keeps thinking of more problems following every problem. And the more he thinks, the more he gets bogged down. It's a demotivating process. My approach is to identify the issue and look for potential solutions. And then get to work. Improvements come about as you go about actually doing instead of just thinking what you're going to do.

The same happens with smaller tasks like writing an email or preparing a proposal draft. Think too much about how to do it and a two-minute email can take up half an hour. The best solution is to start, pause for reflection/revision and finalise.

Reward

End of each day you need to look back and avoid the 'what couldn't be done'. Focus on what you managed to get done instead. A positive mindset fosters creativity. Is there scope for improvement in what you have achieved in the day? Work on that next. The trick is to look for solutions. No one pays you to think about problems.

Writer is Editor of the career, tech and automobile publications of The Daily Star. He is also an entrepreneur of a baby clothing business and previously worked in advertising as a Senior Copywriter