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Summary

When you get into the office in the morning, what's the first thing you do? Most people grab their caffeinated beverage of choice, check their email, and prioritize their tasks for the day. But what techniques do you use to identify what needs to get done first?

One common technique is called the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. This technique can help you determine and prioritize your highest-impact tasks, increasing your productivity throughout the day.

What is the Pareto principle?

The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In other words, a small percentage of causes have an outsized effect. This concept is important to understand because it can help you identify which initiatives to prioritize so you can make the most impact.

Where does the Pareto principle come from?

This phenomenon also goes by a couple of different names:

The 80/20 rule is not a formal mathematical equation, but more a generalized phenomenon that can be observed in economics, business, time management, and even sports.
General examples of the Pareto principle:

20% of a plant contains 80% of the fruit

80% of a company's profits come from 20% of customers

20% of players result in 80% of points scored

Create a prioritization matrix template
How you can use the 80/20 rule

While the 80/20 rule applies to almost every industry, the Pareto principle is commonly used in business and economics. This is because the 80/20 rule is helpful in determining where you can focus your efforts to maximize your output.

The basis of the Pareto principle states that 80% of results come from 20% of actions. If you have any kind of work that can be segmented into smaller portions, the Pareto principle can help you identify what part of that work is the most influential.

Here are a few examples of how to use the tool in practice.

Productivity

You can use the 80/20 rule to prioritize the tasks that you need to get done during the day.

The idea is that out of your entire task list, completing 20% of those tasks will result in 80% of the impact you can create for that day. So in order to get the most impact done, identify which tasks have the most impact for your team and focus on those for the day.
Read: How to be more productive: 13 tips to practice today
To do this, list out all of the things that you need to get done that day. Then identify which of those tasks have the highest impact. Do any of your tasks involve collaborating with other teammates? Are there any tasks on your plate that are blocking projects from moving forward? These tasks may be simple in execution, but they can make a large impact to the rest of the team by allowing the process to keep flowing.

Decision making

1. Identify the problems that your team is experiencing. These are the problems that you're trying to find a solution to within this decision making process.

2. Identify the causes of these problems. Using a tool like the 5 Whys process, find all of the causes of the problems you're trying to solve.

3. Categorize your problems into similar groups. If some of the causes of the problems you're trying to solve can fall into similar categories, use this as an opportunity to group them together. This can help you decide if one solution can resolve multiple issues.

4. Assign a value to each of these problems based on the impact to the business. The value can be as simple as a number between 1-10, or actual monetary value to indicate the importance.

5. Develop a plan to focus on the top 20% of the problems that impact the business. The idea is that one solution can resolve multiple problems. Based on the values you assigned to each problem, calculate which ones are in the top 20%. Once you've identified the main problem, develop a plan to create a solution that can result in 80% of the results using problem-solving strategies.

Example of how to use the 80/20 rule for decision making:
The Pareto principle can help you to make the best decisions during the problem-solving process. When there are many different causes to one problem, the Pareto principle can help you prioritize solutions. Here are a few steps to how this works:

Imagine you work at an ecommerce company. You take a look at 100 of your most recent customer service complaints, and notice that the bulk of the complaints come from the fact that customers are receiving damaged products. Your team calculates the amount of refunds given for your damaged products and finds that approximately 80% of refunds given were for damaged products. Your company wants to avoid processing refunds for broken products, so you make this problem a priority solution.
Create a prioritization matrix template
Your team decides to update packaging to protect your products during shipping, which resolves the issue of customers receiving damaged products.

Quality control

The Pareto analysis and the Pareto chart are key tools used within the Six Sigma quality control methodology.

In the Six Sigma methodology, using a Pareto chart can help you visualize your data to identify how to prioritize actions. Six Sigma's main goal is to reduce the amount of variation in a process with the goal of increasing the amount of production. Pareto charts are common in Six Sigma methodology because you can quickly identify what the majority of the variations are in a process.

Benefits of using the Pareto principle

The biggest advantage of using the Pareto principle is that you can create the maximum amount of impact with the least amount of work. This can allow your team to work more efficiently and stay focused on specific initiatives.
Other benefits of using the Pareto principle:

Clear priorities both for you and your team

Increased daily productivity

Ability to portion your work into manageable segments

More focused strategy

The 80/20 rule can help your metrics increase in less time, simply by prioritizing initiatives in the right order.

Disadvantages of using the 80/20 rule

​​There's a common misinterpretation of the Pareto principle that with 20% of effort, you can achieve 80% of the results. This is not necessarily the case. The 20 and 80% numbers don't refer to the amount of effort you're putting in, but the causes and consequences you're working on. The goal is not to minimize the amount of effort, but to focus your effort on a specific portion of work to create a bigger impact. You still have to put 100% of effort into that 20% of focus to achieve 80% of results.

Another downside of the 80/20 rule is that sometimes team members can get too focused and lose sight on other tasks. If you only focus on the important tasks and put aside the less important tasks, like email and other correspondence, things can get lost. The challenge is finding the right balance of using the 80/20 rule, and getting through the rest of your tasks-even if they don't result in 80% of results. To combat this, you can use techniques like timeboxing or the Getting Things Done (GTD) method.

Connect tasks to goals with Asana
Create a prioritization matrix template
Finding different ways to help your team achieve productivity is an important part about being a team leader. Using a work management tool like Asana can help organize all your team projects and tasks, share files, leave comments and feedback all in one location, while saving you time.

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Learn the Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule) [2023] * Asana

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Also known as the 80/20 rule, this time management strategy can help you identify which tasks to prioritize so you can make the most impact.

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When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others.

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Avoid the Urgency Trap; The Eisenhower Matrix

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Avoid the Urgency Trap; The Eisenhower Matrix

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"Who can define for us with accuracy the difference between the long and short term! Especially whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 address to the Century Association

Dwight D. Eisenhower - five-star general during World War II and 34th president of the United States - was a productive guy.

During his two terms as president of the United States, he led the construction of the Interstate Highway System, created NASA, signed into law the first major piece of civil rights legislation since the end of the Civil War, ended the Korean War, welcomed Alaska and Hawaii into the union, and managed to keep the Cold War with Russia cold.

And he did it all with panache - Eisenhower was Gallup's most admired man of the year no less than twelve times.

How was Eisenhower able to rack up so many accomplishments that would have such a lasting impact on his country and the world? He understood the fundamental difference between the Urgent and the Important. In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president who said, "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."

Over 3 decades later in his best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey repackaged Eisenhower's insights into a simple tool to prioritize tasks, now known as the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as The Time Management Matrix, The Eisenhower Box, The Eisenhower Method, and The Urgent-Important Matrix). This framework for prioritization helps you combat the "mere-urgency" effect (more on that later), eliminate time-wasters in your life, and create more mental space to make progress on your goals.

Try the Eisenhower Matrix if you...

This article will walk you through why distinguishing between the Urgent and the Important is so critical, how the Eisenhower Matrix helps you do it, and how to apply the matrix to both your big-picture projects and everyday tasks using Todoist.

The Mere-Urgency Effect a.k.a. Why We're Bad at Prioritization

How do we decide which task to give our attention to at any given moment? Not very well, it turns out.

A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research set out to examine how people decide what to work on when faced with tasks of mixed urgency and importance. Across five separate experiments, researchers observed a curious pattern: our attention is drawn to time-sensitive tasks over tasks that are less urgent even when the less urgent task offers greater rewards. This psychological quirk - dubbed the "Mere-Urgency Effect" - explains why we're so bad at task and time management. We're more likely to prioritize tasks with a deadline over tasks without one regardless of their long-term payoffs.

And the effect is even more prominent in people who describe themselves as "busy". The same researchers found that self-described busy people were more likely to select urgent tasks with lower payouts because they were already fixated on task duration. If you're already feeling a time crunch, you'll likely continue to prioritize tasks that keep you focused on the clock.

But there's good news too - the mere-urgency effect can be reversed. When participants were prompted to consider the consequences of their choices at the time of selection, they were significantly more likely to choose the important task over the urgent one. The findings suggest that if you keep the long-term importance of non-urgent tasks in view, you can overcome the pull toward urgent distractions and focus on what really matters.

That's where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in.

The Eisenhower Matrix - Urgent vs. Important

The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple tool for considering the long-term outcomes of your daily tasks and focusing on what will make you most effective, not just most productive. It helps you visualize all your tasks in a matrix of urgent/important. All of your day-to-day tasks and bigger projects will fall into one of these four quadrants:

Urgent & Important tasks/projects to be completed immediately

Not Urgent & Important tasks/projects to be scheduled on your calendar

Urgent & Unimportant tasks/projects to be delegated to someone else

Not Urgent & Unimportant tasks/projects to be deleted

In the real world, the distinction between urgent/non-urgent, important/not important is much murkier than under experimental conditions. Here's how Steven Covey breaks it down:

Urgent matters are those that require immediate action. These are the visible issues that pop up and demand your attention NOW. Often, urgent matters come with clear consequences for not completing these tasks. Urgent tasks are unavoidable, but spending too much time putting out fires can produce a great deal of stress and could result in burnout.

Important matters, on the other hand, are those that contribute to long-term goals and life values. These items require planning and thoughtful action. When you focus on important matters you manage your time, energy, and attention rather than mindlessly expending these resources. What is important is subjective and depends on your own values and personal goals. No one else can define what is important for you.

Below is an in-depth look at each of the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix to help you identify which tasks go in each and how to handle them accordingly.

Quadrant 1: Urgent & Important

Urgent and Important tasks demand you take action quickly. These items typically have visible deadlines and consequences for stalling on taking action. Most often, these are either things that were sprung on you from an external source or things that you put off until faced with a looming deadline. Either way, they require a crisis mode response.

For example:

Quadrant 1 tasks are inevitable. Even if you never procrastinated (which is an impossible ask), there will always be something beyond your control. However, the problem comes when you focus on these unexpected or deadline-driven tasks to the exclusion of long-term goals that are important to you.

Covey cautions that spending too much time on Quadrant 1 tasks can lead to increased stress, burn out, and the sense that your days are out of your control. Spending all day putting out fires will quickly rob you of energy and passion for your work, and may make it easier to settle into mindless escapism found in Quadrant 4.

Quadrant 2: Not Urgent & Important

Not urgent, but important tasks are the activities that help you achieve long-term goals. These may not have a deadline (or even an end date) so it is easy to put them off in favor of more urgent tasks. However, these tasks have a much greater effect on your long-term effectiveness in completing your goals.

Examples:

Covey says that Quadrant 2 is the sweet spot of personal time management. This is the spot where you are focused not on problems (as with Q1) but on opportunities and growth. Living from this quadrant of the matrix means that you are proactive and prioritize activities that grow your skills and energy, and contribute to accomplishing meaningful goals. Quadrant 2 is where " deep work " happens because you are largely freed of pressing distractions.

By attending to Q2 consistently, you decrease the number of pressing problems that pop up in Q1. Living in Q2 means that you can create a plan to complete projects and avoid possible problems. For example, if you keep putting off completing routine car maintenance, you may pay for it later when your car stalls out.

Do you manage other people?

Quadrant 3: Urgent & Not Important

Urgent but Not Important tasks are best described as busy work. These tasks are often based on expectations set by others and do not move you closer to your long-term goals.

Examples:

Quadrant 3 is where the mere urgency effect lives. The drive to complete tasks because of real or assumed deadlines means you take on tasks that aren't actually meaningful to you. Given that Q3 tasks are urgent but typically related to someone else's priorities, spending too much time in this square can feel like you are doing things you should do rather than what you want to do. Focus on Q3 tasks may make you feel like you are not living up your larger life goals or don't have control over your day-to-day life.

Covey suggests delegating as many Q3 tasks as possible. Can you have someone else take those meeting notes? Can you get your groceries delivered instead of going to the store? Can you empower your children to do the dishes? Can you hire a digital assistant to schedule family doctor visits? Is there anything in your life you can automate?

If you can't delegate these tasks, try to keep them from taking over your day:

Turn off notifications on your phone and computer when working

Be clear with others about how much time you can spend on a given task

Save Q3 tasks for times when you are very low on energy rather than putting them first thing in the morning

Negotiate your workload with your boss

Quadrant 4: Not Urgent & Not important

Not urgent and not important tasks are time-wasting activities that should be ruthlessly cut out. These activities don't contribute to progress on your goals but can end up taking over large chunks of time.

Examples:

Watching TV for hours

Mindlessly refreshing social media and scrolling

Avoidance activities such as sorting and organizing email rather than answering it

Excessive shopping or online browsing

Quadrant 4 is the quadrant of excess and immediate gratification that ultimately leaves you feeling unfulfilled.

Don't get me wrong we all need some leisure time. Eisenhower himself was a well-known bridge player - even playing nightly up to D-Day - and was famously criticized for his many golf trips while in office. The key is that these activities were a balance for the many stressful aspects of being a political leader. However, if you're not intentional about it, the way you spend your downtime can actually drain your energy, passion, and creativity.

A recent study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that how employees spend their off-job leisure time is a strong predictor for how much energy and positivity they expressed the following workday. Employees who engaged in self-mastery activities such as exercise or volunteering were more motivated the following day. Employees who relaxed with yoga, meditation, or by listening to music approached the workday more calmly.

Employees who engaged in distraction activities to avoid or ignore problems, like watching excessive TV, did show a renewed positivity the following workday. However, with continued use of distraction their moods and motivation worsened as the week continued. In other words, distraction in moderation was ok, but habitual distraction resulted in less work satisfaction overall.

How to rebalance your quadrants

According to Stephen Covey, quadrant 2 is the "Quadrant of Quality" where time spent engaging these tasks increases your overall effectiveness. This is where personal and professional growth meets planning, prevention, and action.

To evaluate where you currently are on the matrix, start tracking your time and tasks. If you use Todoist for task management, you can easily get a list of all the tasks you completed and when you completed them. When you have a few days worth of data, sit down and organize your tasks into quadrants by asking the following questions:

Remember that you are only deciding these criteria based on your desired outcomes, not someone else's.

Once your tasks are sorted into the appropriate quadrants, examine where your time is currently being spent. Are you happy with your quadrant balance?
If you spend a lot of time in Q1, invest time in planning to anticipate and prevent problems:

Next step: Organize a weekly or even monthly plan around your current goals and deadlines. At the end of each week, do a weekly review. Reflect on how well your plan worked and adjust for the next week. If most of your Q1 tasks come from external sources, strategize on how you can better plan and anticipate them. You may need to develop a more proactive workflow with a colleague or client, or talk to your boss about rebalancing an excessive workload. If there's a particular client who's creating a lot of Q1 tasks, the work may not be worth the stress.

If you spend your time in Q3, delegate, eliminate, or limit the amount of time you spend on these tasks: If you spend your time in Q4, you may be stuck in a rut, stressed, or avoiding a problem:

Next Step: Use your time tracking to identify the biggest time wasters and strategize on how to avoid or limit them. Develop a plan to overcome procrastination before you're tempted to procrastinate. Remember, it's ok to just relax sometimes, but activities in this quadrant have diminishing returns when used excessively.

As you shift your priorities toward quadrant 2, keep using the Eisenhower Matrix to know what you should be working on day to day.

How to implement the Eisenhower Matrix in Todoist

You can use Todoist to organize your tasks into the four urgent/important quadrants with two different methods: labels or priority levels. Both methods are outlined below.

Using labels

In Todoist, labels and filters work together to help you organize and sort your task list. For this setup, first create these two labels:

Once you have your two labels, go through your tasks and assign the appropriate labels to each:

Add @urgent & @important to tasks that need to be done immediately and personally

Add @important to tasks that get a due date and are done personally

Add @urgent to tasks that can be delegated or relegated to

Don't add either label to tasks that can be dropped

You can quickly assign a label to any task by typing "@" into the task field. This will bring up a list of your current labels to select from. Keep typing the label name to narrow down the list.

Once all of your urgent and/or important tasks are labeled, create four new filters to correspond with each quadrant:

Urgent & Important with filter query: @urgent & @important

Important & Not urgent with filter query: @important & !@urgent

Urgent & Unimportant with filter query: @urgent & !@important

Unimportant & Not urgent with filter query: !@important & !@urgent

And/or combine them all into one Eisenhower filter with the query: @urgent & @important, @important & !@urgent, @urgent & !@important, !@important & !@urgent

Now you'll be able to check each filter view to know which urgent and important tasks need your attention first; which important but not urgent tasks need to be scheduled; which urgent and unimportant tasks you should either delegate or do in your low energy hours; and which tasks you should just delete.

Using priority levels

Instead of using labels to sort your tasks, you can use Todoist's four priority levels. Each priority level will map onto a corresponding quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix:

Assign a priority level to any task by clicking or tapping the flag icon and then selecting the desired priority level. Change the priority level any time by selecting the flag icon when editing a task, or just type p1, p2, or p3 right into the task field and Todoist will recognize and assign the right priority level when you create the task. Anything without a colored flag is P4 by default.

Next, set up a filter to view your tasks by priority from across all your projects. Go to filters, then click "Add Filter" and title it Eisenhower Matrix. Under query, enter " p1, p2, p3, p4".

Your highest priority tasks will appear near the top of each daily to-do list in your Today and Upcoming views (tasks with both a due date and time will appear first regardless of priority level).

Todoist Tip

Dealing with each quadrant

Once you've set up Todoist to work with the Eisenhower Method, you can begin to evaluate your tasks. Click your new Eisenhower Matrix filters to review your tasks by quadrant.
For Q1: Important & Urgent, p1: For Q2: Important & Not Urgent, p2: For Q3: Unimportant & Urgent, p3:

Delegate as many tasks as you possible. To delegate these in Todoist, you can share projects with anyone, assign tasks, set deadlines, upload files, and discuss task details with collaborators in the comments.

Q4: Unimportant & Not Urgent, p4:
When you're faced with a set of tasks, how do you decide which to tackle first? Do you select the task that's going to bring you closer to your long-term goals? Or do you give your attention to the most urgent item on your list?

Use the Eisenhower Matrix to avoid the mere-urgency trap and do more of what's important to you.

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Avoid the "Urgency Trap" with the Eisenhower Matrix

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"Who can define for us with accuracy the difference between the long and short term! Especially whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future." - Dwight D.

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What is ikigai? It might be a question you've never asked yourself. I, like yourself, never imagined that experimenting and dabbling in all sorts of hobbies, crafts, and careers would lead me to find meaning, and even joy, in my work ... or, my ikigai (ee-key-guy).

Ikigai is an ancient Japanese philosophy that has enveloped the way Japanese people live. Some believe it's even the reason for their happiness and longevity. It's no wonder western culture has chosen to adopt it as their way of discovering a meaningful career.

In this article, we'll explain the origins. importance, and meaning of ikigai. We'll also discuss how to find and implement your ikigai, and what to look out for when doing the inner work to find it.

What does ikigai mean?

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means your 'reason for being.' 'Iki' in Japanese means 'life,' and 'gai' describes value or worth. Your ikigai is your life purpose or your bliss. It's what brings you joy and inspires you to get out of bed every day.

It's important to mention that while traditional Japanese philosophy focuses on finding your bliss, western interpretation has used ikigai as a method of finding your dream career.

The Westernised version of ikigai says you've found your dream career when your career includes these four qualities:

What you love

What you're good at

What you can be paid for

What the world needs

This ikigai diagram helps to visualize this concept by showing these four main overlapping qualities:
Image source
The center point on the Venn diagram where all four circles overlap is your ikigai.

Why is ikigai important?

Japan is ranked second in the world for life expectancy, with women expected to live 88.09 years and men expected to live 81.91 years. While it's true that diet plays a role, many Japanese people believe ikigai has a lot to do with their longevity and living a happy life.

Apart from living a longer and happier life, knowing your ikigai can help you:

Design your ideal work lifestyle

Create strong social connections at work

Create a healthy work-life balance

Pursue your career dreams

Enjoy your work

When you know your ikigai and understand its meaning, you're aligned with the work you've longed to do and the work the world needs you to do.

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Where does ikigai come from, and why is it becoming popular?

The Japanese philosophy of ikigai dates back to the Heian period, between 794 to 1185.

Okinawa is a Japanese island south of the mainland. The island has the highest proportion of people over 100 years old in the world and Ikigai plays a major role in Okinawan culture.

But this Japanese secret isn't just linked to the elderly. It's becoming popular with younger generations both in and out of Japan who are interested in having meaningful work lives.

3 steps to discovering your ikigai

Here are our top three steps to help you discover your ikigai:

Step 1. Answer some questions to find your ikigai

1. What do you love?

If you're currently working:

If you have a hobby or craft:

2. What are you good at?

If you're currently working:

Do people ask you for advice on topics related to your work?

Are there parts of your job that come easily to you?

Are you one of the best at what you do?

Are you/Do you want to be an expert at what you do?

If you have a hobby or craft:

Do people compliment you on your hobby or craft?

Does your hobby or craft feel intuitive?

Are you one of the best at your hobby or craft?

Are you/Do you want to be an expert at your hobby or craft?

3. What does the world need?

If you're currently working:

If you have a hobby or craft:

4. What can you be paid for?

If you're currently working:

If you have a hobby or craft:

If you answered 'yes' to each question in the 'If you're currently working' section, keep doing what you're doing!

If you answered 'yes' to each question in the 'If you have a hobby or craft' section - congrats! You can take steps to turn your hobby into your dream career. Head to step 2 to start.

What if your answers were no?

Don't worry; keep reading for more tips on finding your ikigai.

Step 2. Brainstorm to find your ikigai

Spend some time visualizing your ideal day from start to finish. Believe it or not, this is going to help you determine your ikigai and your true meaning. What are you wearing? Who are you talking to? What are you doing? Pay attention to how you feel. What makes you feel good at work?

When you're finished visualizing, make sure to write it down (or write it down as you're visualizing).

Next, look at the questions you answered 'no' to. Spend some time brainstorming and writing down small changes you can make to align your mission. Align this with what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

For example, did you answer 'no' to 'Do you have an emotional connection to your work results?' Maybe it's because you'd rather work with clients face-to-face rather than on the phone, or maybe you'd like to apply for a leadership promotion at work.

Or, if you answered 'no' to 'Does your hobby or craft feel intuitive?' Maybe you need to take some classes to strengthen your skills so that your work feels more natural.

During this process, make your supreme focus all about finding your center, your ikigai.

Note: It's normal for doubt, fear, or negative thoughts to come up during this time. Facing your future can feel like a heavy challenge. The trick is not to attribute meaning to your doubts and fears. You're stronger and more adaptable than you might think.

Step 3. Study to find your ikigai

You now have a picture in your head about what your ideal workday looks like. Now, consider studying, researching, taking classes, or hiring a coach or mentor. This step can help you discover if your vision meets your real-life expectations.

For instance, maybe you want to be a wedding photographer. But, after mentoring under a professional wedding photographer, you realize it's not for you.

Or, maybe you wanted to sell vintage fashion, but after looking into the process, you realized you didn't want to keep up with so much inventory.

If you go through this process and find that your vision meets your real-life expectations - congrats, it looks like you've found your ikigai. Move on to the next section to see how to put it in place. .

If the opposite is true, don't worry, it can take time to find your ikigai.

Repeat steps one through three with a different job, hobby, or craft until you find your ikigai. If you still can't find it, consider dabbling and experimenting with a variety of roles and/or crafts.

Bake cakes, learn how to code, volunteer, start a book club, design a logo - it doesn't matter. Keep experimenting until you find what speaks to you.

Note: Finding your ikigai doesn't mean you'll love every aspect of your career. It means that you're willing to accept even the not-so-perfect parts. This is because your career is aligned with what you love, what you're paid for, and what the world needs.

4 steps to embracing your ikigai

Once you've found your ikigai, here's how to bring it to life:

Step 1. Create small goals

Now that you've brainstormed some possible solutions, use them to create concrete annual goals. For example: get promoted to manager, change business locations, or start a web design business.

Once you've written down your annual goals, create small monthly goals to help you reach them. The key is to take one baby step at a time until you reach your long-term goal.

For example, if your annual goal is to get a manager promotion, you can set monthly goals. These might look like: meet with your district manager to create a plan, go to leadership development training, and increase daily responsibilities.

Step 2. Plan it out

Next, use your monthly goals to create weekly (or even daily) goals.

For example, if your monthly goal is to go to leadership development training, your first weekly goal could be to research reputable training programs. Your second weekly goal could be to set Zoom meetings with potential mentors.

Now that you've got a list of long-term goals and short-term goals, organize them using a chart, calendar, or notebook.

It doesn't matter what you use - as long as you have a dedicated spot for your plans that you can refer to often, you'll be set.

Make a digital and a paper copy of your plans in case you lose one. Make sure to keep the paper copy somewhere visible, like on a bulletin board in your office or taped to your bathroom mirror.

Step 3. Create a support system

When it comes to finding your purpose, a support system is invaluable.

To create a support system, reach out to mentors, coaches, teachers, and other professionals who have reached similar goals. You can also lock arms with people who are heading toward the same goal.

Cultivate relationships, network, and learn as much as you can from your support system.

Step 4. Test it out

Now that you've got your formal plan ready to go, it's time to test it out. Are you achieving your short and long-term goals? Is there anything bothering you? What's going on?

Can you answer 'yes' to all the questions in step 1 now? If not, it may be time to reassess your goals and plans. A good question to ask at this point is, "Am I focusing on what I should do or what I want to do?"

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3 challenges you might face while discovering your ikigai

It's not always easy discovering your ikigai, but with a little persistence, you'll get there. Here are some challenges you may need to conquer in the process:

1. Feeling overwhelmed

It's normal to feel overwhelmed when you're trying to discover your purpose. The trick is to keep moving forward and ask for support when you need it.

Keep taking action steps towards your goals, no matter how small. Keep moving!

2. Feeling like you don't have time

The good news about time is that it's malleable. With some creativity, you can stretch and organize it to fit your needs.

For instance, that means waking up an hour early to work on your passion. Or, listening to a career development podcast when you're in the car. Get creative, look for time gaps, and rearrange your schedule where it makes sense for you.

3. Fear-based thinking

Our brains are hardwired to protect us from danger - but our brains can sense danger even when there isn't any. It doesn't feel intuitive to put fear in the back seat when you're working towards a goal. But with a little practice, it'll get easier.

Ready to embrace your ikigai?

If you're on the road to discovering a purpose-driven career, we hope this article is what you needed to discover ikigai and its meaning.

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What Is Ikigai and How Can It Change My Life?

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What is ikigai? It might be a question you've never asked yourself. I, like yourself, never imagined that experimenting and dabbling in all sorts of hobbies, crafts, and careers would lead me to find meaning, and even joy, in my work ... or, my ikigai (ee-key-guy).

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1) Know When You're At Your Best

And plan accordingly. To be a productivity ninja focus less on time management, and more on managing your energy.

Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, used a system like this to make sure he was always growing.

He identified the hours when he was at his best - and then routinely stole one of those peak hours for learning.

Via The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen:

Charlie Munger hit upon one strategy when he was a young lawyer. He decided that whenever his legal work was not as intellectually stimulating as he'd like, "I would sell the best hour of the day to myself." He would take otherwise billable time at the peak of his day and dedicate it to his own thinking and learning. "And only after improving my mind - only after I'd used my best hour improving myself - would I sell my time to my professional clients."

Are you a morning lark? A night owl? Tired after lunch? Best after a nap? Track what works for you and plan around that.

2) Get Enough Sleep

No, you can't cheat yourself on sleep.
Cutting corners on siesta time has a cascade of negative effects, not the least of which is making you less proactive.
Via The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest:

Irrespective of how well you were able to get on with your day after that most recent night without sleep, it is unlikely that you felt especially upbeat and joyous about the world. Your more-negative-than-usual perspective will have resulted from a generalized low mood, which is a normal consequence of being overtired. More important that just the mood, this mind-set is often accompanied by decreases in willingness to think and act proactively, control impulses, feel positive about yourself, empathize with others, and generally use emotional intelligence.

In fact, some people's emotions are so disturbed after a night of sleep deprivation that they could be classified as psychopaths.

That might make you into a good real ninja but not a productivity ninja. Wrong ninja.

Via The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest:

All of these things combine to change the way they score on clinical mood disorder scales, often tipping perfectly normal people over the edge into the clinically relevant zone, so that, if tested on that particular day, they could be classified as depressed or even as psychopaths.

What's the best way to improve your sleep? Learn how astronauts sleep.

3) Distractions Will Make You Stupid
Students whose classroom was situated near a noisy railroad line ended up academically a full year behind students with a quiet classroom.
When the noise was dampened, the performance difference vanished. (Silence, vanishing - all very good for productivity ninjas.)

Via Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much:

(There was) a school in New Haven that was located next to a noisy railroad line. To measure the impact of this noise on academic performance, two researchers noted that only one side of the school faced the tracks, so the students in classrooms on that side were particularly exposed to the noise but were otherwise similar to their fellow students. They found a striking difference between the two sides of the school. Sixth graders on the train side were a full year behind their counterparts on the quieter side. Further evidence came when the city, prompted by this study, installed noise pads. The researchers found this erased the difference: now students on both sides of the building performed at the same level.

Distractions might mean you don't notice gorillas walking by. Seriously.

Here's how to improve focus.

4) Work Somewhere That You Usually Get Things Done

Have a spot where you're usually productive? Go there. How about a place where you always screw around and waste time? Avoid it.

Wendy Wood, a professor at USC explains how your environment activates habits - without your conscious mind even noticing.

Via Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore:

Habits emerge from the gradual learning of associations between an action and outcome, and the contexts that have been associated with them. Once the habit is formed, various elements from the context can serve as a cue to activate the behavior, independent of intention and absent of a particular goal... Very often, the conscious mind never gets engaged.

Context matters more than you think.

5) Believe In What You Do

Sounds like a corny cliche, but the research supports it.
What happens when you see your work as a calling, not just a job that pays the bills? You are more thorough, engaged - and happier.
(So maybe we should drop the productivity ninja metaphor and be more of a dedicated productivity samurai? Whatever. Ninja metaphors are lame anyway. You get it. Keep reading.)

Via Choose the Life You Want: The Mindful Way to Happiness:

The research of psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton shows just how much of our mind-set - what we choose to focus on - affects our experience of work. Wrzesniewski and Dutton followed a group of hospital cleaners, and found that some of the cleaners experienced their work as a job - as something they did solely for the paycheck - and described it as boring and meaningless. But another group perceived the same work as a calling - and experienced the hours they spent at work as engaging and meaningful. This second group of hospital cleaners did things differently from the first group. They engaged in more interactions with nurses, patients, and visitors, taking it upon themselves to make everyone they came in contact with feel better. Generally, they saw their work in its broader context: They were not merely cleaning the wards and removing the trash, but were contributing to the health of patients and the smooth functioning of the hospital.

How do you do this? It's about interacting with the people who experience the benefits of your work.

Wharton professor Adam Grant did research trying to motivate employees at a university call center.
When call center workers were shown letters written by grateful students who had received scholarships funded by the workers' calls, their motivation soared.
What pushed their motivation even higher? Speaking with those students.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

When callers interacted with one scholarship recipient in person, they were even more energized. The average caller doubled in calls per hour and minutes on the phone per week. By working harder the callers reached more alumni, resulting in 144 percent more alumni donating each week. Even more strikingly, revenue quintupled: callers averaged $412 before meeting the scholarship recipient and more than $2000 afterward.

Productivity ninja, productivity samurai, productivity Ewok - whatever.

Never, ever underestimate the power of the right attitude.

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Time Management Skills Are Stupid. Here's What Works. Checklist: Are you doing these five things to be the best? What 10 things should you do every day to improve your life

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Productivity Ninja: 5 Powerful Tips For Getting More Stuff Done - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

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And plan accordingly. To be a productivity ninja focus less on time management, and more on managing your energy. Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, used a system like this to make sure he was always growing. He identified the hours when he was at his best - and then routinely stole one of those peak hours for learning.