When it comes to personal productivity, it becomes difficult to measure it in numbers and thus quantify it. Personal productivity depends on many different factors, such as our environment, our habits, and our lifestyle to name a few. Two of the most important factors for personal productivity are both time and energy, with a focus on how we use them.
First, let’s look at some basic tips and then we’ll move to some less common tips.
10 Simple Yet Effective Ways To Boost Your Productivity
- Set priorities
- Retreat every once in a while
- Get up early
- Learn of saying “no”
- Focus on one thing at a time
- Delegate smartly
- Wear headphones (to listen to a book or to help concentrate)
- Give yourself less time than you think you need (Parkinson’s Law)
- Find the motivating reason to finish a task
- Use the power of optimism
Now here are some more… in detail…
Manage Your Energy Instead Of Your Time
Because of the constant feeling of not having time, we assume that we have no choice but to cram our schedule. But having a good time schedule does not guarantee that we will have enough energy to do our job properly.
All of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors have consequences for our energy reserves, for better or worse.
The challenge of performing optimally is managing your energy more effectively in all that is required to achieve your goals.
Performing optimally requires tapping into four different but related forms of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Since our energy reserves diminish with both overuse and underuse, we must alternate between consuming energy and replenishing it.
To build up our reserves, we need to go beyond our limits and train in the same systematic way as top athletes. Oddly enough, stress is actually necessary for growth. Any kind of stress that leads to discomfort has the potential to increase our capacity (physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual), as long as the stress is followed by adequate recovery.
Specific energy management habits are essential for sustained peak performance.
If you are looking for time tracking software, there are plenty of great options.
Prepare The Night Before
Make a schedule
Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow, at what time, and what transportation you will take to do so. Set up your TomTom or check which buses and trains you need to take to get to your destination. This way you can be sure you will be on time when you walk out the door at 7:30 tomorrow morning.
Prepare your task
What’s on the schedule? From an important presentation, an interview for a job you really want to do to an approaching deadline: take a few minutes in the evening to prepare. That way you’ll go to bed with just a little more confidence and be a lot more productive the next day.
Get your bag ready
You probably have a lot of things in your bag. But think about what you’re going to need tomorrow. A load of snacks, an invitation or ticket, your portfolio, etc. Make sure you have these important things ready and don’t forget them in a hurry.
Turn Off Your Phone
After a break, it takes an average of 20 minutes before you get back to your concentration. So it takes longer than just reading that message before you get back to where you left off. Add it all up and a lot of productivity is lost in a day. And that’s a shame because we’re all busy enough already. So, if you really want to stay productive:
Turn off notifications
It helps a lot if you turn off less important notifications on your mobile phone. Does every email need to tell you that you have a new message? It is much more productive to check and answer your email a few times a day. No one expects you to reply within a few minutes.
Put your phone away
Do you find that you regularly pick up your phone out of habit to just check something on the Internet or Facebook? Then put it in another room. Or if that’s not possible, put it in a drawer. In any case, somewhere where it is not directly in sight.
Set phone-free times
The apps mentioned above help to reduce your screen time, but it’s also good to schedule regular phone-free times. For example, after you check your email in the morning and you really want to focus on getting some work done. Set yourself a goal. For example, “I’m not allowed to look at my phone until lunch.” You’ll see that this will become easier and easier for you to do. Especially when you notice how productive it makes you!
Apps that help reduce your screen time
There are several apps that help you become aware of the time you spend on your phone. On your iPhone, you can set your screen time under your settings. This keeps track of how much you look at your screen. This also allows you to set screen time.
Sit Up Or Stand Up
When you sit slumped, your body absorbs 30% less oxygen than when you sit upright. As a result, poor posture causes you to be less alert, you have a worse time concentrating, and your productivity decreases. So in a hunched posture, it’s much harder to keep your energy up.
So to boost your productivity, it’s important to sit up straight. By sitting up straight, you send a signal to your brain that makes your testosterone levels rise, your serotonin levels rise, and your cortisol levels fall. This combination makes you feel more powerful, improves your leadership skills, and gives you better defenses against disease. Furthermore, sitting upright increases the likelihood that you will think positively. This allows you to focus better on your work and get more done.
Use Special Tools
There are several special tools that will help you to stay productive during the day. However, not all of the tools that are available are effective in the long term. There is, however, a tool that will definitely help you to stay productive. This is not a planner or anything, it is an audio to text converter Audext. When we are speaking instead of good old boring typing, we tend to stay a lot more focused. Audext might help you to become a lot more productive through transcription!
Develop A ‘Pre-Game’ Routine To Start Your Day
Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow, what time, and what transportation you will take to do so. Set up your Google maps or check which buses and trains you need to take to get to your destination. This way you can be sure you will be on time when you walk out the door at 7:30 tomorrow morning.