Nowadays, it’s probably impossible to find a person not being concerned with the question of productivity and better, more efficient performance in all life spheres. This is especially crucial to students and those ones who just start their careers and have to figure out a lot of things. For both groups, this is quite a tough period when they feel completely lost and have no clue how to organize their everyday routine efficiently. Usually, at this point, people start searching for help online, reading numerous blogs and articles on productivity, etc. Most of those sources will tell all the same – the key is in your daily habits, change routine, and you’ll immediately know what to do in life! We are exaggerating here a bit, but the idea is pretty much like this. A lot of people would think something like “how on Earth will my routine change my performance?” or “okay, I believe there’s a connection between the routine and productivity, but how do I do this?”. We are here to give you the best possible answer.
Follow the path of famous productive people
All right, let’s say you have successfully completed step one and woke up early in the morning ready to take time and plan for the day or even the whole week. The obvious question appears: how to plan? What to start with? I’ve got too much to do! And here comes the panic… just relax for a moment and have a look at our extremely helpful tips that worked for dozens of successful entrepreneurs and brought their lives to the brand new level.
1. Set the priorities
As you plan, try to concentrate on important rather than “urgent” things. Let’s see how it can work in a real situation: say you have to prepare the analysis of a case study till Wednesday and today is Monday already. What to do first: look for some case study examples to know how to write your own or maybe answer a bunch of administrative emails that can wait till Thursday? Answering emails is much easier, no doubt. But what will actually make you more productive, is solving the tasks of greater importance in the first place?
2. Focus on no more than three big tasks a day
Your brain will easily get freaked out just from the look of a long-long list of tasks to complete and start procrastinating immediately. Once you’ve defined your biggest and most important tasks, try to work on them without being distracted by anything and anyone as it may take a huge chunk of your precious time. It would be much easier to find a quiet place to work at than to recover from a distraction every ten minutes. Setting the phone to an airplane mode is also a great idea.
3. Eat that frog!
You could hear about the book with such title and if not, here’s the bottom line of it – you should do the most important, unpleasant, terrifying tasks first. Otherwise, your brain will be playing tricks on you and make you concentrate on the tasks with much lower priority, but the ones that are easy to do. As soon as you learn to fight your own laziness, and even some of your fears, the upgraded level of productivity will not make you wait long.
4. Use the time blocks
Although it may work for some people, generally it’s not the best idea to switch between tasks all the time. The way more effective method of organizing your work is to designate a certain amount of time to a certain type of task and batch similar ones together to avoid multitasking – this is exhausting, and we don’t want that to happen at all.
5. Invest in good rest
This investment has nothing to do with money, so no worries here. It has to do with your time, and believe it or not; you’ll be much more productive if you have regular 6-8 hour sleep and take breaks throughout the day. Such a regime will help you stay on track, be more focused and alert, and spend less time on preparation to the day, decision making, etc.
Change the morning routine to become a better version of yourself
No matter how trivial it sounds, but there’s a lot of stuff depending on the way you start the morning. Any successful person does this – follows the routine. Why start in the morning? Because it’s the beginning of the day, hence a perfect opportunity to plan the day ahead, prepare oneself to studies/work, etc. and lessen all the potential stress factors.
So, that’s all the secret. Some time spent on planning tricks and learning to follow them will make you a new person and a better version of yourself.
