Boost Your Daily Productivity with iDoneThis

Zach Davis December 29, 2011 Tweet

Do you ever have days where you feel tremendously busy but when 6pm roles around you look back at your day’s productivity, and there’s not much to show for it.  I have.  You get stuck on what’s urgent rather than what’s important. Your day is spent in meetings, answering e-mails and responding to texts, you catch up on a few blogs and then all of a sudden, the day is over and your to-do list looks the same as it did in the morning. Perhaps the solution to this daily tornado of information is as easy as a friendly reminder – a simple five word question.

What’d you get done today?

This is exactly what iDoneThis asks you.

The premise is pretty simple – every day you receive an e-mail from iDoneThis asking you the all too-important question “what’d you get done today“. Reply directly to the e-mail outlining your day’s progress. That’s it.

Seems silly?

Naveen Selvadurai, Co-Founder of Foursquare, would disagree with you. “I’m a big fan of iDoneThis. It helps me catalogue all the little things I do everyday and is a nice complement to my foursquare check-ins and other self tracking tools I use,” says Selvadurai.

Self-help guru Tony Robbins would likely disagree with you too. “Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”

iDoneThis keeps a record of your previous days’ accomplishments allowing you to review your daily output, making it possible for the user to notice trends.  More productive on Tuesday than you are on Friday? With iDoneThis, there’s no concealing this fact. Perhaps it’s time to stop distracting yourself in anticipation of the weekend’s events.

It might be hard to buy that such a simple question could result in any real impact to your productivity. In reality, the question itself has little effect, it’s the accountability that comes from the anticipation of the question. At the end of the day, you’ll have to check-in with the boss- whether that be you or someone else.  In knowing that “responded to a bunch of e-mails” won’t satisfy the boss, you’ll more effectively allocate your time.

iDoneThis is an ideal and simple solution for start-ups. Not having someone to check in with at day or week’s end can leave one easily confused as to what’s important vs what’s urgent. The two minutes required to update your day’s activities can effectively simulate much of the importance of having a traditional boss. After all, who wouldn’t want to replace their boss with a five word question?

So, let me ask you, what’d you get done today?

Related reading:  Increase your productivity with a perceptual map.