To become more productive, it’s important to find habits that work for you and stick to the routines you’ve developed. Here are five simple tips to help you get more done.
The foundation of a productive day is focus
When we’re focused, we get things done faster. And if we’re distracted, our brain can’t fully immerse itself in the work, we don’t get anything done and we get nervous. Our ability to make decisions and think creatively suffers. Of course it’s impossible not to be distracted during the day, but you can still try.
One way to stay focused is to find a comfortable position at the table. Try to ward off physical distractions and concentrate on the work at hand with write paper, for example.
To control your life, control your time
Time is the most valuable resource at work. You can manage much more if you control your time and know exactly what you do and when you do it. But you can never get back the time you waste.
Super Productive people try to spend every available minute to their advantage. Allocate time to all the things you need to do during the day. Each task should be realistic, doable, and have a clear time frame. This way it will be easier for you to focus and you will get more done.
Also be sure to plan breaks. A short walk, a book, or a podcast will help distract you and restore your energy.
Everyday activities should help you achieve big goals
Try to understand how your daily activities and tasks relate to your company’s big goals. When we don’t know the importance of our work, we are much more likely to leave things undone or leave them for later. Realizing that even small and boring tasks help you move toward big goals will make it easier for you to complete any day-to-day tasks.
Focus on the single most important thing
Chances are you have a lot of things to do in a day, half of which you don’t have time to do. So set aside about 30 minutes each morning to plan out the main things you need to do for the day.
Think about what your most important task for today is? Try to complete such tasks in the first half of the day, this will help keep you motivated and get the rest of your tasks done in time.
Take this approach every day. Try to figure out what time of day is easiest for you to focus, and plan for that peak of productivity the most difficult tasks.
Don’t distract yourself from one task to accomplish another
Try to work through each task before moving on to the next. Remember how often we read an incoming message, close it, then open it again and still don’t respond? This only prevents us from concentrating on important work.
So when you get distracted by an unscheduled call or message, ask a colleague to answer it, or answer it yourself if it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. If it takes more than five minutes to answer, better put it on your to-do list and go back to what you were working on. Only when you’re done with the first task, deal with the next one.
The best advice for those who want to keep up with everything.
This time management thought can make all the difference in your day today. It’s as simple as genius!
What we really have is limited.
Yes, you are not wrong, there is no way you can do everything. The world today convinces us that there are no limits. Advertising recommends taking everything out of life, making the most of the moment and believing that the impossible is possible. And every single idea makes sense, but all together it becomes a blatant lie!
We are limited by time, physiological needs, genetics, economic and political conditions, and so forth. To ignore all of this is foolish and even dangerous, because the flip side of perpetual tension and living to the max is mental illness, nothing more and nothing less.
So to counterbalance the claims of human omnipotence, let’s talk today about two indisputable limitations.
Time
Recently a client was complaining that she doesn’t have time for anything at work, she has to stay late for at least a couple of hours, and she would really like to leave on time, because her husband and child are waiting for her at home. Accordingly, the client asks to learn “proper time management”.
We discuss what her responsibilities are and what a typical workday consists of. I found out that her duties include: conducting training, staff evaluation, developing a new project to introduce webinars to the chain (about 70 stores), and organizing corporate life. Schedule of the day.
9:00-9:30 a.m.- Meeting with management.
11:00-17:00 – Daily training with the staff (plus training before and after 30 minutes each).
All, stop! This is enough to understand: the problem is not in time management, but in the fact that the meeting and training take 90% of the working time! This is a very clear example of a mistake we often make.
Physiological needs
The first level of human needs according to Maslow’s pyramid are physiological (sleep, water, food, air). What does this mean in the context of our topic? The energy we take in order to expend it later.
Every time we move, we expend a certain amount of energy. We are limited by how much of it we have. If we don’t have enough energy when we are sleep-deprived and overwhelmed, our body will choose not to perform another task, but simply to sweat (read “conserve energy”), for example, by surfing aimlessly on social media.
The main difficulty is that it is difficult to measure energy levels, especially since each person’s body functions differently. Some people only need five hours of sleep a day to recover, while others only feel good when they get a full eight hours of rest. People with a fast metabolism need an order of magnitude more calories a day to feel alert.
So there are no universal recipes here, just common recommendations.
move more;
go to bed at 10:00 p.m.;
get a massage;
breathing practices;
walk outdoors.
And each of these points should be tested on yourself separately, trying to understand what really gives you energy and a sense of satisfaction and what doesn’t.
How to learn to consider limitations
Time
Now, after parroting you a little bit with the fact that our time and energy are limited, I propose an experiment. For a week, you need to keep a journal describing your daily activities and what gives and what takes away your energy.
Calculate how much time it should take you to do all these things.
Answer yourself the question: do you have that time? Look carefully at your schedule last week and remember that you should leave 30% free time for emergencies when assigning things.
If you have that time, move on to the point about physiological needs and energy.
If you don’t have that time, you want the impossible. And if you want the impossible and blame yourself for not doing the impossible, then you are being extremely unfair to yourself. And you have several options:
Continue to torment yourself for not doing the impossible.
Accept the fact that you are not omnipotent, and do the following.
Prioritize things and do first the “must – a matter of life and death”, then the “highly desirable, otherwise there may be serious consequences” and last the “would like to, but otherwise the consequences will be negligible”;
reallocate tasks. Are you sure you can do all these tasks exclusively? Maybe talk to your boss about a list of your top tasks and the possibility of hiring an assistant? Or can someone close to you take over some of the housework?
Physiological needs and energy
One sign of harmoniously flowing energy is feeling invigorated in the morning. This means you have enough energy to get through the new day. If you wake up feeling good and in good spirits and have time in your schedule to do your chores, then I don’t understand why you’re reading this article at all!
Otherwise, pay attention to what gives you energy during the day and what takes it away. If you spend the whole day running around like a squirrel in a wheel, doing all the work that you don’t like, you have not a minute to spare, and you scold yourself for not having time to do something else, then I hasten to say: you are not an immortal pony. You’re driving yourself into an early grave – you need to reevaluate your priorities.
Take another look at your notes from the previous week and think about it:
And what gives you energy? What other activities (an extra hour of sleep, a massage, a walk in the fresh air) can you add to your schedule to get more energy?
What takes away energy and what can you give up? It’s time to think about prioritizing and redistributing responsibilities.
How can you organize yourself and your family so there are more things that give you energy and fewer things that take away energy?
After answering these questions, do the following.
Make a plan of action and remember that changing everything all at once is difficult, so make one or two changes a week.
Enlist the support of loved ones and treat them with respect: explain why these changes are important to you, and be prepared for them to resist.
Reward yourself even for small successes (with a nice purchase just for yourself, with words of praise) and don’t scold yourself for failures. If you didn’t get something done this week – that’s okay, you’ll do it next week.
So, friends, in an effort to do everything, be sure to remember about the limitations of time and your abilities and do not believe the popular trends. There is no way you can do everything. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get everything done!
