The Type A+ Podcast Episode 21: Productivity Month: Tackle a Big Project with The 1/3/5 Method
Episode Description:
Ahh, Welcome 2023! Beth is admittedly excited to leave 2022 behind, and is celebrating a clean calendar with a new format for the podcast!
January is productivity month, and Beth will be sharing her top 4 tips for tackling the items on your list. In today's episode, we're talking the 1/3/5 method and how Beth applied it to a procrastinated project over the holidays.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Podcast:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Host:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15-minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Hello, happy 2023 and welcome back to the Type A Plus Podcast. I'm your host, Beth Lawrence, and I just have to say, Goodbye 2022. I'm so excited for this new year and it is productivity month here on the Type A Plus podcast. I had so much fun making the first 20 episodes of the show and covering a variety of topics, and I'm not sure that I call it a season, but since we're in the new year, I'm doing something new.
We'll have topics by month, and I'll pick three to four really great tips to share from all the research I've done on that particular topic. Today we're going to be talking about the 1 35 rule. The 1 35 rule is based on a simple three-step formula. Pick one huge task on your list, divided it into three medium size tasks, and then divide those three medium-sized tasks into five small tasks.
An example would be if you had to create a presentation for a big meeting, creating a presentation, at least for me, requires a ton of mental focus from the verbal and written aspects of the project to the design. So that's a major task for me. That large step is distilled down into three steps.
That large step distilled down into three steps would be, for example, creating the content. Find the media and design the presentation. Over the break, I had a big presentation to do for a client, and that's exactly what I did. The first thing that I did was to create the content which was the first thing that I sat down and was able to do.
That's easiest for me. Then it's more fun in my opinion, or less, takes less brain power to find images in media, and then it's easy once you do those two things to design the present. But the 1 35 rule, ask you to distill it down even more. So the three steps are down into five steps, I would divide the first step of the three, creating content into the first step writing an outline, and two, writing or recording the content. I love writing, but I also love descript for transcribing audio. So if you are someone that it's easier to get your thoughts out verbally, descript is a great tool and I will link that tool in the show notes for you. So again, we're distilling the three steps of creating the content, finding media, and designing the presentation.
Those are a little bit too broad, so now we're distilling those down into five steps.
The first step is to write an outline. Two is to write or record the content. Three find media for the presentation and media encompasses videos, photos, colors, and branding. Once you find all of that, then you can input the texts and images into your presentation.
Really build out the presentation in Canva, in Keynote, in PowerPoint, or whatever you're using to create it, and then, the fifth step is to record yourself and review it. It's really one thing to create a presentation, but especially if you're going to verbally present to a client or an associate or a team, it's really good to record yourself, review the presentation and make sure that there shouldn't be any edits.
So I hope that this helps you as you look through everything on your to-do list in January, right? We all have so much on our plates right now, but distilling that huge step of creating a presentation down into those five steps, actually feels less daunting, doesn't it? There is something to that and this rule is something that I think that I am going to continue to use, especially for things like presentations or even creating a blog or social media content for the month, distilling it down into those steps makes it so much easier to picture myself tackling it really quickly.
That's all for this week. Again, we're going to have different themes each month. So if you follow us on social media @thetypeapluspodcast or if you follow me @bethlawrence.co, I would really love to hear suggestions for topics that you'd wanna hear.
We can do everything from weddings to business to home organization to morning routines and night routines. Let me know what you want to hear about. I'm more than happy to share. Happy 2023 and I can't wait to share more content with you. We'll be back next Thursday.