Staying organized is the number one way to master your productivity and begin getting more things done in less time. Many take on life head-on, without taking the little time out of their day to simply plan out their major tasks and projects. This leads to increased frustration and poor performance. However, with this ultimate guide to productivity, you can change your habits, gain motivation, and begin to start seeing results today!

Being able to plan out a busy week with countless deadlines does not have to be daunting, nor stressful! There are easy tips and tricks to help you along the way and today, we are going to take a deep dive into the top productivity tips, hacks, and systems for anyone. These tips will completely change the way you approach your major tasks and projects and help you succeed in your professional, school and/or personal life.

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Change Your Mindset

The first step to conquering productivity is to begin changing your mindset. You need to believe that you can truly get whatever you have on your plate accomplished. The key here is to begin switching up your habits or trying new tactics each time you start feeling unproductive. Read through all of the tips below and choose your favorites to begin implementing now! This may involve grabbing a new planner and dedicate 5 minutes a day to planning out your next tasks or simply committing to go to sleep one hour earlier.

Related: 24 Amazing Stress Management Techniques to Try Right Now!

Use a Planner

It is difficult to describe just how amazingly useful a planner truly is. This amazing tool will help you compile numerous other productivity tips into one great location. Here, you can create prioritized task lists, track your assignments, schedule all of your deadlines, and so much more. In fact, the combination of a changed mindset and a student planner will probably get you further than the rest of the productivity tips combined!

There are many different planners out there that will work wonders! But, you really need to find the perfect one that will work for your needs. Personally, after failing to find that perfect planner I needed, I created my own that you can now get your hands on too!

But, the secret to mastering productivity does not just lie in finding the right planner, but also ACTUALLY USING IT. You need to carve out time each day to prioritize your tasks, evaluate your goals, and schedule out your days ahead. This doesn’t have to be a lot of time, this could just be 5 minutes every evening before you go to sleep!

Related: Organize Your Life with the Only Student Printable Planner You’ll Ever Need in School

Benefits of using a Planner

There are countless benefits of using a planner to master your productivity. It is hands down the best tool you can use daily that will show instant results! In addition, here are the other great reasons to use one now:

1. Increased organization
2. Increased productivity
3. Decreased stress
4. Gain perspective
5. Increased motivation
6. Less screentime
7. Makes productivity and getting things done fun!
8. Get more work done in less time
9. Never miss another deadline
10. Beter your memory

Top Tips and Ideas for Using a Planner

So how do you use a planner… you might be asking? Here are my top tips that I personally use today to maintain my sanity and skyrocket my productivity.

1. Schedule Deadlines, Events, & Appointments: Be sure to always write down and schedule out all of your deadlines, events, and appointments.
2. Create Task Lists: Dedicate a specific space within your planner for your to-dos. 
3. Prioritize your Tasks Lists: Let’s take your task lists one step further by prioritizing them based on what needs to get done first. 
4. Categorize your Tasks: Create separate task lists for different categories in your life such as work, home, school, family members, cleaning, etc.
5. Add Time Assignments to Each Task: Use colors or numbers to represent how much time you think each task will take. Then you can scan through them easily to see which will take only 5 minutes and which you need to block out an entire day to get accomplished.
6. Make Sure Each Task Begins With a VERB: Adding a verb to the beginning of each task will make it actionable. Instead of having “molecular biology essay” as a task, instead, have “write molecular biology essay.”
7. Make your Tasks Specific and Small(er): Instead of having large tasks that may take days to complete, break down your tasks into smaller chunks to be more specific. Example: instead of just “write molecular biology essay,” write out the steps starting with “write molecular biology outline.”
8. Color Code your Tasks, Deadlines, Events, and More: Create a color key with different colors representing your different areas of life, family members, classes, projects or anything else you might have going on.
9. Carve out Time to Plan: Make sure to add “plan tomorrow” to your task list every day, and “plan next week” to your task list once per week. David Allen’s weekly review process in his famous Getting Things Done book is an amazing system for this! Also, you can check out my Ultimate Guide to Daily Planning to help you great the perfect daily planning routine.
10. Utilize Worksheets and Freebies: Using productivity printables are a great way to easily organize your projects and tasks. Here are some of my current blog posts with great freebies included:
    1. How to Study for an Exam (Free Study Planner)
    2. Master the Project Planning Process in 10 Easy Steps (Free Project Planner)
    3. How to Prepare for a Successful Semester (Free Semester Prep Checklist and Packing List) 
    4. The Top 12 Scholarship Tips I Used to Fund my College Education (Free Scholarship Spreadsheet)
11. Complete the Project Planning Process on Large Tasks: When it comes to giant tasks you can’t possibly do in one sitting, you might want to consider turning it into a “project,” and complete the entire project planning process. I take a deep dive into this process in THIS POST. 
12. Write EVERYTHING Down: Ever finally get to bed after a long day but your head is still buzzing about what you didn’t finish? Or, perhaps you keep forgetting to get important tasks done? There is one simple solution to this. WRITE IT DOWN! Write down anything and everything. Remember when we talked about keeping organized task lists (steps 2-4)? Yeah, just write them down there!
13. Keep Everything in One Planner: In addition to writing everything down, make sure that everything you are tracking or planning is all in one planner. Be creative! There are hundreds of things you can have in your planner that can make your life so much easier! I have a giant list of ideas for things you might want to add to your planner in THIS POST.
14. Create a Top 3 For the Day: Having a hard time focusing on all of your tasks? Simplify your day by just creating a Top 3 for the entire day. This will help you focus on what is truly important!
15. Abide by the 2 Minute Rule: Here is another Getting Things Done tip: if you can complete a task in less than 2 minutes, just DO IT NOW. You could have completed that task in the same amount of time it would have taken you to write it down and think about it later.
16. Create a Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly Task List: Have you noticed that each day, week, month, or year you are completing the same tasks while some just seem to slip through the cracks? To avoid this, create a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly task list, then be sure to review them during your weekly review.

Related: 17 Top Ways to Successfully Use Your Planner and Explode Your Productivity

The Top Productivity Tips to Conquer your Task List

Use your planner to implement the top productivity tips. These range from habits to begin to implement into your life to how to motivate yourself to reach your wildest dreams.

1. Create Goals: Having daily, weekly, monthly, and/or yearly SMART goals are great ways to narrow down your focus on your priorities and responsibilities. In fact, the most successful people in the world got to where they are now by setting goals. Goal setting is an amazing source of motivation, accountability, and growth.
2. Create Rewards for your Goals: Speaking of goals, what better way to motivate you into accomplishing these babies than a reward? These can range from new outfits, date nights, weekend getaways, to even a new car!
3. Regularly Check-in and Track your Goals: How will you know when your goal is reached? How far do you have to go? These are questions that you should be asking yourself! One great way to do this is to create a goal tracker. This will help you monitor your progress. Be sure to check in regularly! Check out my blog post about project planning for more information on goal tracking.
4. Visualize Your Goals with a Vision Board: The last goal-related tip is to create a vision board. A vision board is a collection of images that motivate you to reach your goals.
5. Create a Morning Routine: Morning routines are hands down one of the best ways to increase productivity and guarantee a clear and healthy mindset throughout the day. This is a great time to begin healthy habits and prepare your mind for a busy day! Learn how to create an epic morning routine in this ultimate guide.
6. Create a Night Routine: Creating a routine in the evening before you go to sleep has been proven time and time again to help you wind down. In addition, it will help you go to bed at the same time every day, allowing you to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. The key here is to BEGIN your evening routine at the same time every night, allowing you to end up in bed around the same time (yes, even try to do this on the weekend!).
7. Get Enough Sleep: Speaking of evening routines, getting enough sleep is incredibly important to your mental and physical wellbeing. In fact, it is better to get more sleep than to stay up getting things done. When you are better rested, you have the ability to get more done in a smaller amount of time due to increased focus and energy!
8. Stay Healthy: Staying healthy is the base of productivity. You can not begin to master your task list when you are tired, sluggish, and unfocused. So, when in doubt, bring it back to basics. In addition to getting enough sleep, make sure to drink enough water, eat healthy, and exercise. “But I’m too busy!” you might be saying. I would argue that NO, you aren’t too busy, you just have different priorities. Your health should be at the top of your priority list! Tip: Check out my post about eating healthy on a budget! 
9. Establish Productive and Healthy Habits: Speaking of staying healthy, let’s talk about establishing habits. A habit is something that you do every day without thinking about it, and the best way to begin changing your habits is to understand how they work. Reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is a great way to do this!
10. Take Advantage of the Weekends: It can be difficult to fit in everything we need to get done during the weekdays. That is what weekends are for… right? When you begin to feel overwhelmed, block off one of your weekends and just dedicate it to getting caught up on your task list, housework, or errands.
11. Minimize Distractions: While you’re getting to work, be sure to prepare your space beforehand with minimal distractions. Set your phone to airplane mode or “do not disturb,” declutter your desk, make sure there is no TV or radio on, use ambient noise to block out any other noises, and make sure you have everything within reach that you might need (water bottle, pens, planner, paper, computer, etc.).
12. Use your Phone or Television as a Reward, NOT a Break: We all know how distracting social media and television can be! So, when you’re about to hit a break, refrain from checking your favorite social media site or watching a TV show. Instead, save this for the end of the day as a reward!
13. Switch up Your Environments: If you’re beginning to lose productivity, what you might need is a change in your environment. This could be as simple as switching up your desk decor or desktop background, to visiting a cafe or library for an afternoon.
14. Avoid Computer-Eye Strain: Take frequent breaks from the screen. Just looking away for 20 seconds every hour will help tremendously! HERE is a great article about computers and eye health.
15. Avoid the Afternoon Slump: Low motivation and productivity is a common problem in the later afternoon. Your body and mind are both beginning to tire, leading to exhaustion and decreased productivity. Combat this by taking a walk, grabbing a snack, or switching up your tasks. 

Related: Blast Through Your Task List with the top 18 Life-Changing Productivity Tips

The Top Time Management Tips

Be sure to try out some of these great time management tips. You can always use your planner as a tool to implement these great techniques as well! HERE is a great article with extra time management tips!

1. Take Frequent Breaks: Taking breaks is an essential part of having a productive day. It minimizes burn out, keeps your mind sharp, and encourages you to get more done over a longer period of time. One great way to ensure you are taking frequent breaks is to follow the Pomodoro Technique. 
2. Decide When in the Day You’re Most Efficient and Energetic: Deciding when you are performing at your best will be a game changer! During this time, you can schedule out your most daunting tasks or the tasks that are going to take the most brain power.
3. Delegate: Learn how to delegate tasks that you do not necessarily need to complete. This can either be to a friend, family member, coworker, classmate, or whoever!
4. Learn How to Say No: Cutting out unnecessary tasks or events is one of the best ways in which you can cut down on your to-do list.
5. Utilize Time Blocking: Time Blocking is a simple time management technique that involved reserving a specific amount of time during your day to dedicate working on one given task. 
6. Create Themed Days and Weekly Tasks: Time blocking pairs nicely with themed days and weekly tasks. What do I mean by a “themed day”? Basically, this means that each day of the week, you assign one big task/project to be working on.
7. Eat the Frog: Ever heard of eating the frog? It is a famous saying by Mark Twain, made even more famous and meaningful by the author Brian Tracy. Eating the frog means to get the worst or hardest task done first thing in the day. Once you get that done, it is all downhill from there!
8. Refrain from Multitasking: Learn when to and when to not multitask. You will actually get more done if you focus on one thing at a time. However, there are those perfect times multitasking will be more beneficial, such as listening to an Audiobook while cleaning or commuting!
9. Track your Time: Ever wonder where the day has gone? What did you actually spend your time doing? If these thoughts ever begin to enter your mind, tracking your time might be a good idea for a while. Sometimes it only takes one day, sometimes a few weeks to get back on track, but this technique is a great way to recommit to your priorities.
10. Break down large tasks: Turn large tasks into a “project” and complete the entire project planning process for them. This involves breaking it into smaller chunks, creating a deadline, and a specific goal for the task.
11. Don’t let your time rule you: Realize that you do have time for anything, you just need to make it a priority. Whatever you are spending your time doing is what your current priorities are (even if it is subconsciously). So with that, learn how to manage your time based on your priorities, instead of letting your time rule you.
12. Create a TA-DA List: During those days or weeks you are truly feeling unproductive, instead of creating a to-do list, just create a ta-da list. A ta-da list is a list of everything that you have DONE during the day, instead of everything you need to get done. Can be pretty satisfying! Related: 13 Surprising Secrets to Master Time Management 

College Specific Productivity Tips:

Whether your a freshman or a graduate student, these college tips will help you master your productivity in and out of the classroom!

1. Pre-Class Online Portal Check-Ins: Each morning before class, check in with your online portal. Use this time to see if there have been any updates to your lecture and print out any relevant diagrams or class notes. Speaking of online portals, if you’re taking online classes, be sure to check out my ultimate guide to online classes!
2. Utilize Your Class Syllabus: Many students will forget about their syllabus after the first week of classes. Don’t be that person! This document has some very important information.
3. Use a Student Planner: Use a planner designed for students! These are great ways to help you through your classes, and of course, keep your life organized.
4. Write you Notes in Color: Colorful (and fun) notes will increase your productivity in two big ways. First, it will encourage you to spend more time taking notes and pay attention in class. Second, colorful notes will motivate you to review your notes more, and in turn, increase your study time and motivation. It is much more enjoyable to review notes that are already organized and pretty!
5. Utilize Time Between Classes: It is incredibly common to have time between classes. This time is often too short to return to your dorm/apartment and too long to just sit around and do nothing. Use this time to your advantage! Get some studying done, run campus errands, search for scholarships, or start working on your homework assignment.
6. Utilize the Time Directly Before Lecture: Ever arrive to class and you have a few minutes where people are just sitting around waiting for the professor to begin? This is the perfect time to review the previous day’s notes, check your syllabus, organize your binder, or even get your notes set up for what is about to come (adding your date, lecture subject, etc.).
7. Come Prepared to Campus: Coming to campus with everything you might need for the day will help you avoid wasting time tracking down any of the essentials (such as food or random school supplies). Make sure you always leave your place with the college essentials in your bag everyday!
8. Quit Procrastinating: I know, college is hard. But it is harder when you continue to procrastinate and just build up your to-do list! The number one tip to quit procrastinating is to create your own deadlines, that is before the actual deadline! This will allow you to plan out when the best time is to complete any given assignments or projects and decrease your workload over the semester.

Related: Discover 10 New Secrets for College Productivity

BONUS: 14 Productivity Tips for Working-from-Home

The following are my favorite tips for increasing productivity while working from home. Some of these are repeats from above, while others are added bonus tips. I swear by these tips for increasing my work-from-home productivity!

1. Increase motivation by setting small goals and rewards: This has been an absolute game changer. I have been creating a “top 3” list for each day and setting a reward for the end of the week. If I meet each “top 3” by then, I get my reward! Such a motivator! 
2. Use a Vision Board: Another great way to maintain motivation is to use a vision board. This definitely is geared more towards helping you reach your actual goals instead of smashing your to do list, but often times these are intertwined. HERE is my ultimate guide on creating the perfect vision board. 
3. Track your habit-related goals by using a habit tracker: For your habit-related goals (such as working out, drinking water, meditation, daily cleaning, etc.) using a habit tracker is a great way to help ensure you reach each one. This way, you will know exactly when you get to celebrate with a fun reward! Check out my printable habit tracker to help you get started. 
4. Block distractions by listening to ambient noise: A great way to get in the zone is to throw on some headphones and listen to ambient noise (such as soft instrumental music or the sounds of rain). You can find apps (such as the Forest App) that will do this on a timer so you know when to take breaks. 
5. Turn your phone onto airplane mode during work hours: Another great distraction blocker is to simply turn your phone onto airplane mode. This will help you stay on track and off social media. 
6. Use a planner: I can’t stress how important this is!! I actually went ahead and started from scratch and reprinted my planner to get completely reorganized and into a new, work-from-home productivity headspace. HERE is my planner, I love this thing so much and absolutely swear by it. Not matter what, whichever planner you decide use, be sure to actually look at it and use it throughout the day. 
7. Find a place in your home for work (and only work!): Having a dedicated space in your home is a great way to help you differentiate between home-life and work-life. I personally use my desk in an office space I’ve setup. But you could just as easily use a small counter space, dining room table, or another area in your home. Just be sure to do nothing but work there! 
8. Take breaks away from your work space: Next, be sure to take frequent breaks throughout the day so you don’t get burnt out.
9. Work during your best time of the day: Are you a morning person? A night owl? Whenever you get your best work done, be sure to take advantage of that time to accomplish your hardest, most brain-draining tasks. 
10. Make exercise and healthy habits a priority: It is easy to overlook exercise and healthy eating while staying indoors and away from other people. However, maintaining your healthy habits is essential to not only maintaining a healthy immune system, but boosting energy and productivity levels. There are a TON of at-home workouts on YouTube, check them out if you need some inspiration. 
11. Utilize time blocking techniques: Time blocking is the perfect way to help you accomplish a lot of tasks in a small window of time. I go more in depth about time blocking and themed days in my Time Management blog post if you need more guidance.
12. Use project planning techniques to accomplish larger tasks: Project planning is a great way to break down your largest tasks. HERE is my free project planner to help you out and HERE is my Ultimate Guide to Project Planning. 
13. Actually get dressed for the day: This must be some sort of psychology trick… I have no idea if it is proven to work but it definitely helps me!!
14. Be sure to end your day! I always end my day by planning out my next day. This way, I know that whatever I didn’t get done WILL get done. This also helps me transition from work mode to home mode. 

Related: How to Start a Bullet Journal from Scratch – Everything You Need to Know

Productivity must-read books:

A great way to increase your productivity is to routinely change up your systems and learn new time-saving tips. I have found that the best way to do this is to read! I challenge myself once a month to read a book related to productivity and have seen some amazing results. Here are my top productivity reads:

1. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen: If you read any book, read this one. Allen packs this best seller with countless productivity tips as well as an entire productivity system you can implement today. It truly is a must-read for everyone!
2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey: This is another amazing and must-read book. In fact, this book paired with Allen’s Getting Things Done is often seen on popular career book lists, and for good reason! Covey covers the life-changing habits that you can incorporate into your everyday life that has been proven time and time again to increase productivity and better your overall wellbeing.
3. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod: This book has been growing in popularity over the last year or so. It is a detailed account of how your morning routine can truly change the way you live your life, and what exact things you can do to start your day strong.
4. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business by Charles Duhigg: This bestseller is another great read! It covers the science of habit formation, how to create new habits, how to cut out unhealthy ones, and what habits you should consider adding. He argues that the true key to productivity and living a healthy lifestyle is understanding how habits work.
5. Smarter, Faster, Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity by Charles Duhigg: Another bestseller and great book by Duhigg. It covers eight key productivity concepts including goal setting and decision making, that set productive individuals and companies apart from the pack. All of his arguments, like The Power of Habit, are backed by science-based evidence. Incredibly enlightening!
6. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: This book, written by a world-renowned psychologist, goes over the two main ways in which humans think: quickly and slowly. Our quicker instincts are more emotional and intuitive while our slower thoughts are more logical. Having a better understanding of the way we think makes it easier to understand processes, such as decision making, that are vital to productivity.
7. Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy: Eating the frog is a metaphor for taking care of your most challenging tasks first. This principle is the basis of this great book, exploring many ways in which you can learn how to not get everything done all at once, but instead getting the most important things done first. Learning how to prioritize is one of the best ways to master productivity and this book is a great way to explore this concept.

Related: 21 Life-Changing Books for 20-Something’s (that will teach you everything school didn’t!)

Dang, that was a lot! I hope you enjoyed and perhaps found some helpful tips that will boost your productivity! Happy planning!

Looking for the best tools and tips for your productivity? Check out my top tips to utilize your planner!