Kate Henry [00:00:08]:

Hello everyone, it’s Dr. Kate Henry. And welcome back to Honing in for another solo episode.

 

Kate Henry [00:01:00]:

I hope that you’ve been staying cool in the northern hemisphere with me or keeping warm in the southern hemisphere, if you’re listening from down there. Today I’m sharing a behind the scenes look at three productivity tools from my own toolbox. And you might assume that because I’m a productivity researcher that I have a pristine way to get things done, or that I just wake up and sit down at my desk and work nonstop for eight hours and am incredibly productive. But I need support just like everyone else to help me prioritize the actually important tasks and focus to get them done. I started researching productivity in earnest in 2018. So while I decided to frame today’s episode as the productivity tools that I use every week, I could have just titled it the three Productivity Tools I’ve Been Using Every Week for the Past eight Years. Because as you’ll hear today, these are tools that I have been utilizing since way back when I was in graduate school. I’ll dive right in and share the first tool with you, which is the Must do method.

 

Kate Henry [00:02:17]:

In 2019, I called the Must do method the productivity tool that changed my life. I know that’s very dramatic, but it still rings true. I learned about the Must Do Method from the author Sarah Knight. She is the author of a lot of practical and really funny books. I recommend listening to them on audiobook. And she tells us about the Must do method from her book get your Shit Together. So it’s pretty fitting the Must do method if we’re gonna approach it in a productivity approach. It’s sort of similar to the Eisenhower matrix, which is a tool that you’ll come across if you’re looking up ways to prioritize your tasks.

 

Kate Henry [00:03:00]:

So before we get into the must do method, let’s learn a little bit about the Eisenhower matrix. The matrix prompts us to prioritize tasks based on two importance and urgency. So it’s a matrix because there’s four quadrants. The four quadrants are tasks that are important and urgent, and we’re encouraged to do those now tasks that are important but not urgent, and we’re encouraged to schedule those for later tasks that are urgent but not important. And we’re encouraged to delegate these to others and tasks that are neither urgent nor important. And we’re encouraged to just not do them at all if we don’t have to. I think that this can be a helpful tool if you’re just starting to think about how you might want to approach a big list of tasks and you’re struggling to know which one to start with. But my concern with it is the expectation that we can just delegate tasks to others or just not to do them.

 

Kate Henry [00:04:07]:

And some of those tasks that we’re encouraged not to do are things that can be nourishing or fun, like watching TV or going for walks. Maybe not quote unquote urgent or quote unquote important but still nourishing. So I think it’s a helpful starting point, but it’s not going to be accessible to everyone. And I don’t think it’s just like thing that we should depend upon to, you know, fit ourselves into those literal boxes. So this is why I like the must do method. I think it has a little bit more breathing room. The must do method asks us to think about what is urgent and important and to schedule tasks accordingly. So I use the must do method to help me schedule my weeks.

 

Kate Henry [00:04:55]:

I like that this tool prompts me to consider when I truly need to complete a task and that can help me know when I want to start it. So let me show you what this looks like in my life. For an example, when I use the must do method, I start by writing out a brain dump of everything that I have to do in the near future. So this might literally be the next week. This might be big projects that I’m working on that I know are going to have milestones coming up or things that I don’t want to forget about. And I’m careful to think about some behind the scenes tasks or labor that I might not think of as work. So for example, doing laundry, that’s something that would need to go on that brain dump, even if it’s not connected to my work or my output, because it’s something I need to do with my time and energy to take care of myself. I then go through that brain dump, this list of all the things I need to do and identify when I need to complete a task.

 

Kate Henry [00:05:58]:

And this is depending on how much time or effort it’s going to take. And this can also help me then think about when I need to begin that task. Some tasks will be quite short. I can just knock them out in an hour. And some things are tasks that I will need to work on across multiple days. I then take this and put it into my bullet journal, which I use as a weekly planner, and I also put it into my online calendar which I use to track my events. For example, I might know that I need a particular outfit to wear on Saturday, but it’s only going to take a day to wash it and dry it. So I don’t technically need to do laundry on Monday when I’m already busy at my start of the week tasks.

 

Kate Henry [00:06:42]:

If I have a busy Monday, I don’t also need to stress myself out to try to fit in laundry, but I also don’t want to leave it until Saturday morning. And if I know, for example, I’ll be traveling on Thursday or Friday, I don’t want to leave it until Friday night. So I would schedule it for Wednesday. My goal with the Must do method is to not feel rushed and to not forget anything. And this is why I like to start with that brain dump look at when I need things to be done or when I need to start them and schedule it accordingly. Another thing that I love about the Must do method, and this is why it’s a tool that really changed my life when I think about productivity, is that because I’m scheduling particular tasks for specific days mindfully, intentionally wisely, I don’t necessarily need to overwork once I complete that day’s tasks. So if I know and I can trust that I have scheduled things that I need to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, et cetera, I don’t need to start on Tuesday’s tasks on Monday because I’ve sketched them out accordingly and in the process of doing that have been thinking about not overworking or overbooking myself. This gives me permission to take the rest of the day off after I finish that day’s tasks, because I can trust that I’ve strategically scheduled things in my calendar.

 

Kate Henry [00:08:05]:

I’ll make sure to share in the show notes some instructions on how you might use all of the tools I’m talking about today, and I’ll link to some things about the Must do method there. The second tool that I use every week is gamification, and this is a tool that I’ve talked about in blogs and newsletters, and I’ve also talked about it in a post that I wrote for Inside Higher Ed for the Grad Hacker blog series about the five tools that helped me finish my dissertation. So you know it’s a good one. Gamification is how I get things done for those tasks that I’ve scheduled with the Must do method. I’ve been using this for years and let me just tell you what it is, I guess before I get into the examples. Merriam Webster defines gamification as the process of adding games or game like elements to something, such as a task to encourage participation. So gamification can help us be a little bit more intrigued, interested, motivated to work on a task. And this might include tracking your progress with a tracker that you can color in or put stickers on racing to see how much you can complete in a set amount of time.

 

Kate Henry [00:09:28]:

These are examples of ways that we might get those game-like elements in something and create a more confined time block to work on something as well. I wrote about gamification in my blog post how to Play the Game Tools that prompt action in 2025 and I was excited as I prepared for today’s episode to look back at that and see that some things still ring true. I still like to gamify to complete tasks between events. So if I have a meeting coming up in a half hour, that can be a really nice motivator for me to see, ooh, how many dishes can I wash because then I won’t have to wash the dish later. I like to achieve a streak of repetitions. I have a habit tracker that I put stickers in, and I can see that I have been meditating for over a hundred days straight because I’ve been tracking there. I also like earning a reward in an app. So some of the habit tracker apps that I utilize, or the meditation app for example, gives me little digital rewards when I complete something.

 

Kate Henry [00:10:37]:

But as I said in 2025, and this still rings true, if there’s a particular reward or a certain number of times I’m trying to do something after I achieve that or hit that, I don’t have the same, you know, intrinsic or I guess extrinsic really motivation to keep going because I’ve already sort of like won the game. So that’s important for me to know about gamification. Some examples of the ways I use gamification and these are things you might want to try out. Pulse and Pause. This is the pomodoro method, which you’ve probably heard of. The pulse and pause method is where we pulse. We do focused work for a set amount of time and then we pause, we take a break. And the pomodoro approach is 25 minutes of focused work and then a five-minute break.

 

Kate Henry [00:11:30]:

And what I like about this is that you can measure your progress on a task based on the number of pulse Work sessions that you do. This is helpful for something like writing a book, which you’re not going to finish in one work session. But you can still say, hey, I did a great job. I did two Pomodoros today and that was my goal. Another example of gamification that I completed in June and was very successful, surprisingly. But I guess not surprisingly because I like gamification is I did the 1000 words of summer experiment that’s hosted by Jamie Attenberg and that meant that for 12 days I wrote a thousand words each day. Now they weren’t great words, they’re not totally refined because the purpose was just to do some first drafting and getting things done. But this meant that I had over 12,000 words.

 

Kate Henry [00:12:24]:

And because I had gamified that I could write crappy first draft in, you know, less than 45 minutes if I was aiming for. And doing that for two weeks in a row actually helped me to start to build a habit so I could continue doing that sort of writing. Other examples of gamification that I use are the Finch app. This is an app where you can do self-care tasks and it’s totally gamified. Almost like a little Tamagotchi where there’s a little cute little bird, a little finch and you can tell it you’re going to do tasks. And something I really like about the Finch app is that if you cannot complete a task for whatever reason, and as someone who’s chronically ill, sometimes I can’t complete all of the tasks that I wanted to do. It gives you an option to write why you could not complete that task and you still are rewarded with the points for that day or for that task. So I think that that’s a quite accessible way to do productivity.

 

Kate Henry [00:13:33]:

The third tool that I have been using every week for a very long time is body doubling and this helps me with accountability. This is co working, this is having coaches and mentors to check in and report my progress. And this is very helpful for me because I respond well to external accountability. When I was new to my productivity studies, I read the Four Tendencies, a book by habit researcher Gretchen Rubin. I think that we should take personality studies with a grain of salt. So please feel free to take what works and leave the rest here. But I like the ways that Rubin categorized four different personality types for following through on things. So how you respond to external and internal accountability.

 

Kate Henry [00:14:25]:

Her four types that she generated are the upholder who can hold themselves accountable so they don’t require external accountability. An obliger who are more likely to follow through with external accountability but might struggle with internal accountability. This is me, maybe this is you as well. A questioner. These are folks who will follow through with external accountability if they have a good reason why. And the rebel these are folks who can sometimes struggle to follow through with internal and external accountability. But there are of course ways that all of these four personality types can find increased accountability. So there’s lots of ways to approach this.

 

Kate Henry [00:15:09]:

I’ll link to Gretchen Rubin’s website if you want to learn more or take this quiz yourself. Body doubling can be really helpful for working on aversive tasks, and aversive tasks are the things that we are averse to doing. We might procrastinate on these because they’re boring, they’re not interesting, they’re complex, they’re confusing, we’re not quite sure what we should start with. So if we bring these tasks to a co working or body doubling session with someone else, even if the other person is doing a completely different task than we are doing, it still can set up a really helpful accountability system. So for example, I attend six hours of co working a week to work on my writing and it’s easy for me to want to work on an admin task instead of my writing. I want to work on my business. I want to get ahead on things. So it can be challenging to really prioritize the writing that I want to do.

 

Kate Henry [00:16:15]:

When I’m in a co working session with someone else and I say hey, in this next hour or this next two-hour session, I am going to endeavor to do X, Y or Z with my book and my writing. I am more likely to actually follow through on that because I’m also going to do a quick report out at the end of the session to share what I did. Also, doing co working on Zoom or online with someone else lets me know that folks can see me. So if of course I can get up and walk away and do what I need to do. But if I’m getting up to go change my laundry four times during a co working session, folks can see that. And even if they don’t call me out on it, I know they can see it. And that helps me keep my bum in the chair and do the writing. So I respond incredibly well to co working.

 

Kate Henry [00:17:07]:

It’s a little bit more challenging for me to do co working in person because I do like to gab and I do like to catch up and chat. And when I’m working on an aversive task, it’s a little too easy for me to say hey, what are you doing this weekend? And chat. So doing co working and body doubling on Zoom has actually been incredibly helpful for me because I’m not going to unmute and say hey everyone, what are you doing this weekend? I’ll link to a couple of posts about body doubling and co working, including again that five productivity tools that helped me finish my dissertation because this was certainly one of them. And I’ll also link to a helpful newsletter about this. Thanks so much for listening today. This was a short and sweet episode. Just to let you know that I am also working on these things just as you are. I have spent a lot of time over the last eight years practicing productivity tools, researching them and honing a toolbox that really works for me as an individual and these three tools have proven year after year to be things that are incredibly helpful for me.

 

Kate Henry [00:18:21]:

I hope that you can continue to build your own toolbox and I invite you to check out the resources in today’s show notes to see if you want to give any of these a try. Thanks so much everyone. Take care. Of Honing. Thanks so much for joining me. You can learn more about honing in and my work as a productivity coach on my website, kate henry.com.