5 INTJ Productivity Tips To Maximize Your Time and Energy
Today we’re talking about my favorite INTJ productivity tips.
These tips evolved from setting up my days in the most efficient and effective way for my INTJness.
But since INTJs’ superpower is breaking complex concepts into actionable systems, these tips can help all personality types think strategically and intentionally about how to better manage your time and energy—and thus your career.
Hint: It’s not about hustling harder, working longer hours, or doing MORE. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Here are my favorite 5 INTJ productivity tips to manage your time and energy.
1. Connect Your To-Do List to Your Goals
One of my favorite INTJ productivity tips is to manage my to-do list by the week instead of each individual day.
This gives me a lot more flexibility to flow with my energy but still exit the week on track.
I know what I want to accomplish by end of day Friday and still have space to flex if I need more thinking time, want to play around with a solution, or even take an unplanned afternoon off.
It feels a lot more spacious and expansive. And honors that precious INTJ freedom value.
However you manage your to-do list, make sure there’s a clear connection between every task and your longer-term career goals.
If the connection isn’t there, lose it.
Because it’s not bringing you closer to your true goals.
Which is decidedly unproductive.
Too many people still measure productivity by an outdated industrial revolution standard of output.
Or they’ve been tricked into thinking “hustle” is a good measure.
These are the EXACT WRONG MEASURES.
Unless you’re working an assembly line, you’re not getting credit for how many widgets you complete or how many hours you’re working.
Ask yourself: "How can I get the BEST result with the LEAST amount of work?"
INTJs HATE work that doesn’t serve a purpose. Or that feels like we’re spinning our wheels rather than furthering our big vision.
So INTJ productivity is about alignment, sustainability, and leverage.
2. Identify Your 1-3 Most Important Things
Identifying your 1-3 Most Important Things is a super-clarifying exercise to kick your INTJ productivity into high gear.
It will keep so much clutter from even making it on to your to-do list.
(Or *gasp* do away with it entirely because you’re operating from intentional habits.)
Your 1-3 most important things are the things that are essential to your career success, happiness, fulfillment.
My 3 most important things are:
Clients
Writing
Videos
Plus, one quarterly project, like redoing my web site or creating a new course.
This is a great way to capitalize on that hallmark INTJ singularity-of-focus strength.
I must admit, I can get overwhelmed with the sheer number of ideas I get in a given day, so having a boundary and mantra around “one project at a time” has been a game-changer for my workaholic tendencies.
As an INTJ, you know that we’re going to want to act on these big ideas, which often leads to having several projects going on at once.
You’ll learn when we get to tip #5 why that’s not a great habit.
The surplus ideas live on in my planning documents and journals and lists (lists everywhere!) until I can find a space to fit them in.
But they don’t crowd out the 1-3 important things or my quarterly project.
The more you maximize daily focus on the activities that are most important for your career goals, the more you’ll notice unproductive activities just drop off.
3. Condense Your Workday
One of the smartest INTJ productivity tips is to artificially condense the amount of time you have to complete your most important things.
You know the principle: the task expands to fill the time you have?
The same presentation that you can bang out in a couple hours when given a deadline can drag out for a week if you allow it.
So practice setting a condensed timeframe.
I’ve found giving myself a 4-6 hour window keeps me pretty darn focused on the most important things for that day.
You pick what works for you.
When you’re setting your window consider the best time of day for your energy.
My productivity window was originally 11am to 4pm-ish because I was rebelling/recovering from the insanely-early wake-ups from my time in corporate.
Now it’s shifted earlier since I’m well-rested (and also old). Plus, there’s a certain satisfaction calling it a day at noon and having the rest of the day to play.
The key to this productivity tip starts with acknowledging that 8-10+ hour work days are not productive and committing to work differently.
4. Carve Out Thinking and Creating Time
Dedicated thinking and creating time is an INTJ productivity must-have.
Like a true INTJ, my perfect day has a mix of time for uninterrupted thinking time and building real-world solutions.
The key word is uninterrupted.
So I challenge you to block out this time on your calendar as if you’re out of office.
Don’t accept meetings. Put the notifications on mute. Back away slowly from your inbox.
Start small if you need. And communicate to your team ahead of time if that’s what it takes to maintain the boundary.
An amazing side-effect, similar to tip #3, is how much more respectful of your time people will be when they have less access to it.
This habit is an energetic game-changer. Imagine waking up on a Monday or Friday morning and having the whole day laid out in front of you to DREAM BIG and DO.
5. Limit Context-Switching
It’s critical for everyone’s productivity to limit context-switching.
The idea behind context-switching is that as soon as you focus on more than one activity, you lose productivity simply because your brain has to switch.
If you’re switching between two tasks at the same time, 40% of your productive time goes to each task, and 20% of your productivity is lost to context switching.
With three tasks, you lose 40% (!) of your productivity.
Here’s a great context-switching article that explains the concept and includes some great real-world stats about the dire costs of context-switching.
Calendar Blocking and Task-Batching
Similar to tip #4, one of my preferred methods to avoid context-switching is to set up calendar blocks around the 1-3 most important things.
For example, I coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On coaching days, I’m 100% focused on coaching.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are my thinking and creating time. On thinking and creating days, I’m 100% focused on thinking and creating.
Necessary but lower-impact administrative activities, like email or social media, get their own time block at the beginning or end of my condensed workday.
(And many are automated or outsourced.)
But I don’t insert it into the middle of the main focus for that day.
Even in between coaching sessions, I don’t shift to writing a blog. I stay in “coach mode”—processing the recent session and focusing on the upcoming one.
And I also use the time in between sessions to transition.
Build In Transitions
Building in transitions helps with context-switching and helps INTJs recharge our precious energy stores—especially before and after interacting with others.
As we just learned, back-to-back meetings are context-switching vortexes, especially when you’re jumping from topic to topic or toggling between big picture and details, as most leaders are.
But the energetic output of meetings for INTJs is particularly detrimental.
Scarred from 10-hour days of back-to-back meetings in my corporate career, I now schedule a minimum of 30 minutes in between calls, so I can recharge and transition my focus to the next person.
A good transition is about awareness: consciously closing out one activity and moving to a new one so your energy isn’t simultaneously in 3 different places.
You’re not ruminating on the activity that just ended. You’re not anxious about the one coming up. You’re fully present where you are now.
I share more in the video above.
Signal the End of Your Workday
As a recovering workaholic, building in a ritual to signal the end of my work day has been a productivity game-changer.
This is especially important if you have a work from home situation or are an entrepreneur, where work-life boundaries tend to bleed together.
I had a client who signaled the end of the day by shutting down her laptop and putting it in the closet.
I power down my laptop AND force myself to go on a walk.
I’ve found that I need to mark my end of day transition by moving myself physically out of the space I’ve been working in.
And since it’s really easy for me on these walks to stay in that very future-focused “INtuitive” space of staying in my head, I try to ground myself in the present by intentionally shifting to observing what I see, hear, feel, etc. in the world around me.
In addition to being a great INTJ productivity tip, it’s become a cherished ritual of celebration, gratitude, and being present for life outside of work.
INTJ Productivity Begins With a Commitment To Yourself
“But, Caroline, how can I put these productivity tips in place when I don’t have control over my schedule?”
If you’re telling yourself you don’t have the time or can’t control your schedule, I invite you to start there.
Because I’ll bet that story is interfering with more than just productivity.
If you’re considering a career change and don’t know where to start, you can read more about INTJ careers here.
Your turn. I’d love to hear what you think of these 5 INTJ productivity tips. Which ones will you try first? What would you add to this list?
INTJ productivity tips are but one small piece of the career fulfillment journey.
You just need the roadmap that gives you the confidence, clarity, and concrete steps to get you the rest of the way there.
Take the first step and get my free 4-step roadmap: Take Back Your Life and Design a Career with Purpose.
Author Bio:
Before becoming a coach, Caroline worked in management consulting and financial services. She's made it her mission to help people grow, contribute, and get wherever they want to go.
She’s also a tennis fanatic, aspiring Minimalist, FIRE (Financial Independence and Retire Early) enthusiast, and Aloha Spirit seeker 🤙. She loves to share stories from her unconventional life and career focused on freedom, creativity, fun, health, family, and community. If she can do it, you can, too.
The life and career you want really is possible once you have the roadmap. Take the first step by downloading her free guide.
