Staying productive through the long work week can be a challenge. There are so many things that can distract you from what needs to get done (vacations anyone?)! With all of these great opportunities that come our way, how are we supposed to get our massive to-do list done? And, this is definitely a stretch here… like it?! Well, guess what, there is a way! We can make our mundane and tedious task list much easier and… dare I say… enjoyable! with these amazing and life-changing productivity tips.
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Productivity 101
What does it truly mean to be productive? Does that mean that you stay busy throughout the day? NO! Instead, it means that you actually are accomplishing tasks over a period of time! You can be busy the entire day, but not get anything done. I know, we have all been there…
The definition of productivity is the success in ones effort to work, measured in units of output per units of input. Okay so… this really boils down to this: if you put a ton of effort into your work/task list, you should be getting a ton in return!
The Top Productivity Tips to Master your Task List
1. Create Goals
Having daily, weekly, monthly, and/or yearly 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.
Tip: Be sure you are creating SMART goals! These are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. I go over goal setting in my project planning blog post.
Related: Organize Your Life with the Only Student Printable Planner You’ll Ever Need in School
2. Create Rewards for your Goals (And Celebrate!)
Speaking of goals, what better way to motivate you into accomplishing these babies without a reward? These can range from new outfits, date nights, weekend getaways, to even a new car! But don’t forget to take the time to actually celebrate reaching your goals and enjoying your reward!
Tip: Try to scale your reward based on the size of your goal. For example, for smaller goals (such as exercising 3 times this week or acing a quiz), you might want to treat yourself to a small movie night or a delicious dessert, but a large goal (like graduating college, passing the BAR, or landing your dream job) deserves a large reward! Such as a weekend trip!
Related: 24 Amazing Stress Management Techniques to Try Right Now!
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 and daily planning routines for more information on goal tracking.
Tip: Create milestones with smaller rewards. This will help motivate you even more!
Related: Master the Project Planning Process in 10 Easy Steps (Plus a Free Project Planning Printable!)
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. These could range from photos that trigger your goal (such as a cozy reading nook to remind you about your goal of graduating summa cum laude) to photos that inspire you to continue (such as your dream car or goal body). You could even add photos of your rewards! There are countless benefits to creating a vision board including motivation, incentive, clarity, and positivity. They are so much fun to make and take very little time to do.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Vision Board that Actually Works (Only 9 Steps!)
5. Use a Planner
A planner is the number one productivity tool. This is where you can keep all of your events, deadlines, appointments, tasks, routines, notes, habits, lists, and so much more! There are so many ways to utilize a planner, check out my post on how to master your to-do list using a planner for more inspiration. Also be sure to check out my student printable planner!
Related: The Top Tips You Can Utilize Today in Your Planner
6. 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 anything!
How do you create and begin following a morning routine?
All you need to do is pull out a sheet of paper (you can even write this down in your planner) and write down all of the things you want to accomplish every morning. Then put them in order of how you want your ideal morning to go (with times you need to be done with each task). Now, every morning when you wake up, bring this list around with you and use it as a checklist!
What should you put on your morning routine?
Perhaps one of the most powerful and popular morning routines is the Miracle Morning created by Hal Elrod. This is a set of six different tasks to complete each morning that will guarantee a healthy mindset and increase your productivity throughout the day. The six habits are: silence, affirmation, visualize, exercise, read, and journal. I HIGHLY suggest you read more about this in Elrod’s book The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 AM), it is a total game changer!
Ideas for what you can add to your morning routine:
- Excercise
- Meditate
- Yoga or Stretch
- Affirmations
- Visualize
- Journal
- Read (for education or for pleasure)
- Drink 2 glasses of water
- Declutter your space
- Clean an area of your home
- Plan your day
- Prepare your dinner (move something from the freezer to the fridge?)
- Shower/Get ready for the day
- Work for 10-15 minutes on a specific project or a goal
- Listen to a motivational podcast (these are my favorite!)
7. 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, assisting you to end up in bed around the same time (yes, even try to do this on the weekend!).
How do you create and begin a night routine?
In the same way you created a morning routine (tip 6), create a list of things you would like to do every night that will both help you prepare for the next day, and relax your body and mind. Write down what tasks you would like to get done, what time you would like to get to bed, then decide what time you need to begin your evening routine in order to get to bed by that time. Finally, use this list as a checklist every night and put it in your planner for easy reference.
Ideas for what you can add to your night routine:
- Shut down all of your electronics (including the television)
- Meditate
- Yoga
- Go for an evening walk
- Shower, brush teeth, wash face, etc.
- Declutter your space
- Plan out the next day
- Drink a warm tea
- Set out anything you might need for tomorrow (outfit, bag, etc.)
- Make your lunch for tomorrow
- Read
- Journal
8. 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!
The amount of sleep you need depends on a variety of factors including your age, medical condition, and activity level. But, one of the best ways to ensure a full night’s sleep (and waking up at the proper time) is to understand sleep cycles or cycles of which our body and mind oscillate between deep sleep and wakefulness.
Each individual has a different sleep cycle length but they typically span between 1-2 hours. The best way to understand yours is to have a sleep study done. However, no one has time for that! I prefer to just use sleep apps to track mine. Most of them will even wake you up at the best time in the morning! I personally use the Sleep Cycle App, but there are plenty in the App Store.
Tips for getting better sleep:
- Establish an evening routine (covered in tip 7)
- Stick to a similar sleep schedule throughout the week
- Sleep with little distractions (turn off any lights, close the blinds, etc.)
- Use a white noise machine or app to block out any loud noises
- Excercise during the day
- Separate your bedroom from your workspace (don’t work in bed)
- Don’t drink coffee in the afternoon
- Use an app to track your sleep cycles
- More tips from WebMD
9. 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!
If you are having a hard time making your health a top priority, think of it this way: if you are healthy, you will be more energetic, which will turn into more things getting done, I promise! Stop right now and create a to-do list for tomorrow. At the top, you should have the following: exercise, drink 8 glasses of water, go to bed by 10p, and eat one salad (or something similar to this list…). Then, you can fill in any other tasks for the day.
Related: The Ultimate System for Eating Healthy on a Budget
10. 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. Once you begin to establish habits, it takes less thought and energy to get these tasks completed, such as exercising every day or cleaning your kitchen every evening. Morning and night routines are great times to begin establishing habits into your everyday life. Take advantage of this time and begin adding tasks that are productive and subtracting habits that are unhealthy.
Many people say that it takes 21 days to form a habit, but scientific studies state that it depends on the habit and the individual. Instead of focusing on how long it will take you to establish a habit, just focus on completing that task every day until it begins to take less and less effort to do. Then, you can begin to add another habit to your daily life!
Hands down, one of the best ways I have learned why and how to establish habits and which habits are worth my time was by reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, I highly recommend it!
Maintaining healthy habits is one of the best ways to ensure productivity in your life. Click To Tweet
11. Master the Art of Time Management
Because there are not an endless amount of hours in the day, our limiting factor is TIME! So, we must master the art of time management. Once you begin to master time management, your productivity will skyrocket! You will understand that you are the ruler of time, not the other way around!
Related: The Top Time Mangement Tips to Master Your Task List
12. 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.
Another way you can use the weekends to your advantage is to create a reoccurring weekend task list. These should be tasks that revolve around preparing for another successful week.
Tasks to prepare for a new week:
- Plan out your meals
- Grocery shop
- Meal prep
- Clean
- Run and fold laundry
- Plan out next week
- Review last week
- Get caught up on work or school tasks
- Study
- Dedicate some time for rest and relaxation
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Monthly Planning
13. 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!
14. 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.
Related: Complete Guide to Planning – Everything You Need to Know
15. 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 anything else, and make sure you have everything within reach that you might need (water bottle, pens, planner, paper, computer, etc.).
16. Avoid Computer-Eye Strain
Take frequent breaks from the screen. Just looking away for 20 seconds every hour will help tremendously! Try to focus on something at least 20 feet away (which will relax the eye muscles). I can’t tell you how much this will change your day, you’re eyes will be much less strained and you can avoid any unwanted headaches. You can also add a color filter to your screen and warm up the tones a bit, or purchase specialized glasses. HERE is a great article about computers and eye health.
17. Avoid the Afternoon Slump
Late afternoon low motivation and productivity is a common problem. Your body and mind are both beginning to tire, leading to exhaustion and low productivity.
Tips to avoid the afternoon slump:
- Take a planning break (plan out your next day to give you motivation and perspective)
- Take a short walk outside
- Drink some water
- Grab a snack
- Switch to an easier (or more fun) task
- More tips for avoiding the afternoon slump!
18. Educate Yourself and Read the Top Productivity 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:
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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!)
Looking for more ways to tackle your to-do list? Read more tips on how to build your time management skills!
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