13 Strategies To Jumpstart Your Productivity

Looking to increase your productivity? You've come up to the right article. I don't claim to be a productivity main (I always think there's room for improvement), only I am very passionate near increasing productivity. I'm always looking for different ways to be more productive – stealing pockets of time where I can, deprioritizing the unimportant, getting system overhauls, etc. And I love it when I see my efforts pay off in the form of increased outputs at the finish of the twenty-four hour period.

In this commodity, I have selected 13 of my best productivity strategies – tried, tested and validated. If you follow all of them to a tee, I can guarantee you that your productivity will double, triple whatever it is right at present – or even more. I personally arrive a point to follow these steps every 24-hour interval. During the days when I don't practice that, my productivity plummets. The days I do, my productivity soars. The correlation is obvious. I have also compiled a list of the best resources for some of the steps for your further reading.

Here they are :D

1. Gear up your productivity targets

Probably half of the cocky-help articles out there keeps telling u.s.a. to set goals and ready targets. Exercise you know why? Information technology'southward because it really works. When you fix goals, you lot focus your energy on the things you desire to achieve. Things which you wouldn't exist achieving by default. That automatically makes you more than productive.

I do regular goal setting to maximize my output. For case, one of my goals for the upcoming calendar month is to write 30 articles, which is an average of 1 commodity a day. These articles volition include articles for my blog, The Personal Excellence Web log, and guest articles for other large sites, including LifeHack.Org. My boilerplate output in the past few months was only been an average of ane-2 manufactures per week, and then I decided to set a xxx article goal to stretch me to write a lot more than I normally exercise. Past virtue of just setting this goal and striving for it, I'm naturally increasing my output more than than if I didn't fix it.

Be articulate on what exactly you desire to attain. What do you want to achieve for the upcoming month? What is a goal that will make you experience absolutely exhilarated and surging with pride if you attain information technology? Prepare that every bit your goal. From at that place, set your weekly goals. Finally, yous can set your daily goals which become your mean solar day-to-day targets.

Farther reading:

• Goal Setting – The WHY behind the WHAT
• Ten commandments of goal-setting
• 5 Ways to Set up Your Goals in Rock

2. Maintain a work surroundings conducive to productivity

Does your piece of work surround encourage you to work? Or does it distract you generally? Your environment sets the phase for your piece of work catamenia, so pick the right surround to piece of work. What is the kind of environment that encourages you to piece of work? This might require a bit of experimentation. After trying out dissimilar places, I observe that I piece of work all-time in quiet spots where there are minimal people around – such equally my room, the library, cafes and in my neighborhood. Then I merely do my piece of work at these areas.

Those of y'all who are employed tin't exactly choose the environment to work in. If that's the example, then modify your environment to make it conducive. Organize your piece of work desk (next footstep). Decorate it with your favorite pictures and inspirational quotes. Put up a photograph frame or two. Have your favorite mug in that location. Sometimes you lot may non enjoy all the piece of work you have to practice, but that doesn't mean you have to make yourself miserable. If you feel like habitation, you volition be more inspired to go things washed.

Further Reading

• x Steps to a Zen-like Working Environment
• Featured work environments @ Lifehacker.com (Smashing way to get inspiration for your piece of work space)

3. Take an organized workspace

Having an organized work desk volition undoubtedly assistance better your productivity. If you accept a messy workspace, you volition feel disorganized and sluggish. You won't even feel like doing anything since it's and so disorganized. Whereas if y'all have a nice, tidy and organized workspace, yous'll be inspired to get work done. Y'all can notice your things easily rather than waste precious minutes sieving through your pile of papers for something you saw just a while ago. If you are self-employed like I am, information technology's particularly important to exist organized and on top of things.

I have a small work desk in my room which I make a point to keep clean and tidy. My reports, folders and random papers are stashed into a magazine organizer (which I got from Ikea iii years agone for a few bucks only – i of my best investments e'er). Pens and stationery are placed in the stationery holders. I leave plenty space for my laptop and a writing area on my right side. Throughout the work days my table volition become cluttered naturally, so every few days I will do some cleaning and tidying to get things in order. Even my own laptop is considered a part of my work desk-bound – and I utilise post-it notes and excel sheets to organize my task lists. All these create an inviting space for me to piece of work at any time of the day.

Further Reading:

• How to Declutter Your Workspace
• 12 Tips for an Organized Desk
• ten tips for keeping your desk-bound clean and tidy

4. Put first things first

Habit # iii in Stephen Covey'due south vii Habits of Highly Effective People. First Things First refers to putting the of import things first before annihilation else. And why does this thing? That'due south because there are 24 hours a twenty-four hour period.  There are about a million different things we tin can pick to do. Some will be important things that make a difference. The rest volition be unimportant things that actually don't brand any deviation at all. Out of this million things, we have to pick and cull, otherwise nosotros'll forever be drowning in piece of work and never get anything done. Focus on the important and deprioritize the latter.

1 question I use to filter out the unimportant tasks is "Will doing this brand a difference in the next 6 months?" If the respond is no or a small yeah, I put it aside. If information technology's a big yeah, then I give asymmetric focus to information technology. Of course, we can never give a 100% accurate assessment since we can't run across the hereafter, but nosotros have sufficient knowledge to give a good assessment. For example, my key goal for this year is to develop my weblog, which is an essential part of my personal evolution concern. When I apply that question to my list of blog tasks, I automatically focus on tasks like (one) invitee posting which lets me accomplish out to significantly more readers and gains new long-term readers and subscribers to my blog (ii) writing new, quality manufactures to my readers and (3) writing my book which volition be a personal milestone and constitute a new income stream at the same time. Other miscellaneous tasks like checking emails, sorting them, editing the site and reading facebook/twitter messages get deprioritized to later parts of the twenty-four hours.

Farther reading:

• Put First Things First (Time Direction Matrix)
• Put Kickoff Things First (Stephen Covey's site)
• First Things Beginning (Wiki)

5. Time box your tasks

Time boxing refers to boxing your tasks within stock-still time slots. For case, boxing task A from nine-ten:30am, then task B from x:xxx-1pm, and then task C from 2-4pm. Time battle is practiced considering it prevents your chore from dragging on and on. There's a saying that your work will accept all the same long that y'all want it to, and I find it'southward very true. E'er have a project deadline where you need to fire the midnight oil to get the piece of work washed? Most of us usually feel that we wouldn't need to rush like that if the borderline was later on on. Fact is, it doesn't matter when the borderline is. Even if it's one week later on, 2 weeks later or 1 month later, the same final infinitesimal rush will nevertheless have place before. We take that long to do the work because that'due south the timeline we give ourselves.

Hence, time box your tasks. If you set a specific time menstruation and strictly adhere to it, y'all will find a way to get the work done. Of form, fix a fourth dimension that is challenging yet doable. If a chore requires 3 hours, don't set 4 hours because you will use up all the iv hours. Set three hours – preferably bottom so you tin larn to optimize your output during the period (over again, provided yous enforce the fourth dimension box strongly).

Further reading:

• Timeboxing
• xv Time Battle Strategies to Get Things Done

Of course, it may be hard for the neurotic perfectionists among us to limit the time spent, because that'll result in a compromise in quality. That goes to our next principle, which is…

half-dozen. Utilise the 80/20 rule

eighty/20 refers to the phenomenon where 80% of the outputs is brought nigh by xx% of efforts. The remaining 20% of the output can just be achieved by putting in 80% effort.

So let's say you take a report due, and to produce the accented best report y'all are capable of, yous need about 100 hours. 80/20 rule says that y'all tin can become fourscore% of the quality in by spending 20 hours (20% of 100 hours). On the other hand, the finishing touches to heave this report from a 80% to 100% quality requires you to spend 80 hours (80% of the time). From effectiveness standpoint, that doesn't cut it at all. 80/xx rule tells u.s.a. to just get the fourscore% quality in and chuck the remaining xx% since the time needed doesn't justify the increase in value we get.

Hence, by the 80/20 dominion, we accept to learn to let go of the nitty gritty. Forget the little details that no one simply you notices. You can keep revising something to perfection, simply that fourth dimension is probably better spent working on a whole new task. The cardinal is to focus your energy on producing the 80% of every thing yous do – which is too the fourscore% that matters. Describe a mental cutting off limit and let get of everything that lies exterior of the limit.

Further reading:

• Achieve More With Less In Life Using fourscore/20 Principle (3-role serial)
• 20 Ways To Apply the lxxx/xx Rule Into Your Life
• The Top iv Misapplications of the fourscore/twenty Rule

7. Take a separate list for incoming tasks

If you're like me, y'all are going to get a whole streaming list of random, miscellaneous tasks to practice throughout the whole piece of work day. I used to requite attending to these things when they come immediately. Say extra chore # 1 comes in now, I'll practice information technology immediately since it takes just 5-x minutes. This is the same for extra task # two, #3…. all the way to #15. Subsequently a while, I realized these things accept a lot of my time and I don't even go any meaningful result out of them.  Non just that, I never go to terminate my real piece of work for the day because I'm so busy with the random stuff. I may think I'thousand beingness very productive when I terminate them, just truth is it's just fake productivity.

So nowadays, I just use a separate list for these urgent tasks. I dump all the incoming tasks into the list and focus on my daily goals list. So at the end of the day, I allocate a time slot to articulate these tasks. I batch the like urgent tasks, then clear them at 1 become. Turns out I'm always able to get them cleared less than an 60 minutes, compared to the few hours I'd have taken if I attended to them in the day.

8. Upgrade your skills

Our limitations in output come from limitations in our ain skill level. Upgrade your skills and you will increase your output. It'south like updating our computer software with newer versions then we can create more. Our skillsets are our tools that help us create. We demand improve tools to create amend materials.

For example, now that I want to write an boilerplate of a new article a day, I need to learn to maintain/increase the same quality of writing as before, while writing in lesser time. In preparation of that, I'1000 reading more A-List personal development blogs (to be more in-tuned with A-listing writings) and writing blogs like Copyblogger and Write To Washed to pick up writing techniques/skills. These will undoubtedly aid me to write faster.

What primal skills practise you utilise in your piece of work? How tin can you upgrade them to become more productive?

9. Know your motivation triggers

You know how in that location are times when nosotros are really inspired to work, where other times we'll feel like a total sloth? It's normal. The sloth-similar times come when we lose touch with our inner muse. If y'all are aware of your motivational triggers, you can connect with them and jumpstart your productivity.

For example, I'm usually inspired to piece of work on my blog, and I find I'chiliad fifty-fifty more inspired knowing I have a target to reach (such as achieving X subscribers by the month), or when in that location's (friendly) competition (benchmarking my traffic against larger personal development blogs), or when there's a cause bigger than me (recognizing that there are many people out there who stand up to proceeds from my articles). When I sieve out these triggers and integrate them with my daily life – such as subscribing to the feed of those A-listing blogs, having open communication channels with my readers (comments expanse, facebook, twitter, electronic mail) and talking to fellow bloggers, my momentum increases dramatically. It becomes an upwardly spiral that reinforces itself.

How about you? What are your motivational triggers? When were the times when y'all felt inspired? How can you integrate these triggers into your daily life to reinforce your motivation? Doing this will definitely heave up your productivity.

ten. Utilize time pockets

The fourth dimension pockets refers to the little pockets of time you have in between one event to the next. Time pockets unremarkably appear during waiting / traveling times, such as waiting for buses / trains, commuting, waiting for appointments to outset, etc. Have some prepare activities to exist washed during the fourth dimension pockets. You will exist amazed at how much tin can be done in just a short corporeality of time. Some activities I practise include listening to self assistance podcasts and typing my articles on my laptop. Usually I make certain I get a seat on the bus by taking the earlier buses. In a 40-minute journey, I can become most 20% of my articles typed in a xl infinitesimal bus journey, or nearly 400~500 words. That'south a good corporeality of work done compared to if I just slept on the trip.

Further reading:

• How to Make Good Use of Time Pockets

11. Hold yourself accountable to your targets

Progress tracking is essential to know how you are doing. We can be frantically working to up our productivity but if we know there's no accountability, at some point we're going to boring down. I take a weekly review with myself every Saturday forenoon, where I review my progress in my goals the week before. If I met my goals, I give myself a big hug and pat on the back. If I didn't, I understand what went wrong. And so from there, I plan out my action plan for the side by side calendar week to attain next week's goals. These weekly goals ladder upward to the monthly goals at the end of the month, where I do a monthly review.

Further reading:

• How To Achieve Your Goals With Success: Review
• Edifice the Weekly Review Habit
• Review Your Goals Weekly
• 12 Ways to Upgrade Your Weekly Review

12. Wake up early on

This may exist specific to individuals, simply I'll just share this as information technology's true for me. Waking upwardly early really does make me work faster and better. Personally I don't remember there's any scientific rationale behind waking upward early and being more productive. I think it's more of a psychological experience-skilful factor – Since you are upwards earlier 99.99% of the world, you desire to maintain the lead, and then that spurs you on to work fast. When you lot work fast, you finish more things, and that motivates yous to maintain the lead and practise even more stuff.

Another reason why waking up early helps is because the quietness in the morning is a conducive environment to get more washed. I dear being up early (5am) and hearing absolutely nothing in my neighborhood. The birds accept not fifty-fifty broken into song yet, cars are non on the road and my family unit isn't upwards either. Perfect time to get things done.

Farther Reading:

• Productivity Boost: How to outset your day at v:00 AM
• How to Become an Early on Riser
• 21 Tips To Wake Upwardly Early on
• Create a Forenoon Writing Ritual

thirteen. Recall To Rest

We are non machines or robots. We can't sustain the same output incessantly without balance. When the time comes, nosotros need to remainder/slumber to recover our free energy, so nosotros tin keep on the next 24-hour interval. Remember, it'due south about quality of work produced, not quantity of hours spent. I find that when I choose to continue on when I'one thousand tired, I'k nonetheless able to produce stuff, merely at a dismal stride. When I get my rest though, I tin can get a lot more than done, fifty-fifty though the total number of hours spent is actually bottom.

Further Reading:

• How To Get The Rest You Need
• The Importance of Scheduling Downtime

Let me know how these 13 strategies work for y'all. If you have other productivity principles, I'll love to hear them too. I'll be happy to talk over them in the comments area.

Images: rberteig, aheram, danseprofane

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