There are some people out there who simply get things done. How do they do it? Before you sit down in front of your laptop and have your first sip of coffee of the day, they’ve already been to the gym, walked their dog, answered a few emails, and organized their whole week. All the while, you’re still gathering your thoughts. Therefore, you now want to know how to be more productive during your working day.
You needn’t worry, for we have all the tips and tricks you could possibly need. Here we go.
How to Be More Productive – The Most Important Tips
#1. Plan Ahead
We’ve already mentioned this concept in the introduction, as something successful and productive people already do by default. You should do it as well. Planning ahead can mean anything from scheduling your day, to your week or even month, if you can. The main idea here is to do it, and not start your working day just like that.
You know that feeling you have when you sit down to work in the morning, and you just don’t know what to do first? That’s a bad feeling, and it’s utterly counterproductive. You won’t believe just how much time you waste every day simply thinking about what you need to do. Apart from that, it also disadvantages you from a psychological point of view.
Stop doing it now and plan your day, as granulated as possible. If you can schedule your working affairs by the minute, that’s even better.
#2. Clean Up Your Working Station
This is yet another piece of advice on how to be more productive that fits just about anyone. It doesn’t matter if you work in a company on a laptop, in a restaurant’s kitchen, making baked products or in an architect’s office with lots of plans in front of you.
Mess leads to stress and distraction. For example, the famous tennis player Andre Agassi used to say that he never let anyone touch his bag. The reason was that, if it got messy or disorganized, he would get distracted and wouldn’t perform as well.
Therefore, you should get rid of all the newspapers and magazines you have lying around, plants that you don’t like, memorabilia you no longer care about or old coffee cups.
#3. No More TV and No More Social Media
During working hours, that is. Here is how to be more productive. Say goodbye to TV shows, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and everything else in the online world that could distract you. That means your phone, as well. Stop checking it every five minutes to see if anyone liked your vacation pictures or left you a comment. That’s a job for the ‘after-hours’ you.
Social media can be a fantastic venue for us to communicate and create marketing strategies for ourselves and our businesses. However, when all you do is scroll, scroll, and scroll some more to see who else got a new haircut, it’s not helping you at all. Put down your phone and get to work! You can also sell your TV, why not?
#4. Stop Saying Yes All the Time
Did you ever have one of those days when you work so much that you’re exhausted at the end of the day, and still feel like you accomplished nothing? You don’t even know why that is since you did work non-stop. The reason is that you didn’t stick to your schedule and kept taking on tasks that were unforeseen.
The underlying causality here is the fact that we are almost unable to say ‘no’ to things such as these. We have a profound desire for other people and our working peers to like us. Therefore, we feel that, if we say no to their demands and requests, they might like us less.
However, being learned in the art of how to be more productive teaches us a trick on how to handle this situation. You don’t have to say ‘no’ at all. Just say ‘not now.’ Kindly explain to your colleague or manager that you do want to perform the task they asked you to, but only after you finish your more urgent matters at hand. This timeframe can mean later in the same day or during the next one when you can find a time slot for the task.
#5. Never Multitask
You might feel that talking on the phone with a client while drinking coffee while walking your dog while heading toward the supermarket is a great way to get more things done in the same amount of time. In fact, it’s not. The reason is that, when you try to do all these tasks at once, each of them takes longer.
It is true that we can distribute our attention, but you must know that our attention span is limited. The more activities you add to the list the harder it will be to do them all. Therefore, it will take you 30 minutes instead of 15 to walk the dog, and twice as much to shop at the supermarket if you keep looking into your phone to answer emails while you do it.
Do you want to know how to be more productive? Focus on whatever it is you’re doing right now.
#6. Do You Have a ‘Stop That’ List?
If you don’t, you should. Many people who brag about knowing how to be more productive will tell you that they have ‘to do lists.’ That’s absolutely terrific and goes hand in hand with our advice to be organized. However, the best in this game will tell you that you also need a ‘stop that’ list.
Keep it as simple as you can and post it somewhere where you can see it all the time. That way, when you feel like procrastinating, take a look at the list you made and start working.
#7. Make Use of ‘Wasted’ Time
There will always be some unplanned windows of time in your working day. For example, the office printer can break down. In the same way, the colleague with whom you were supposed to give a presentation can be late and so can your plane. Do not waste these windows of opportunity that present themselves in your time-economy plan.
Instead of sitting around and waiting for other people to arrive or to fix broken things, you can work, write, make plans, reports, create, and design. If you want to learn how to be more productive, you should always remember that every second counts. Even if you only have a few minutes, you can answer some of the emails in your inbox or even make a phone call.
#8. Do the Things That You Don’t Like
Another thing you need to embrace on your way of learning how to be more productive is that hedonism and productivity don’t go together. If you want or need to be more industrious during your work hours, you also have to do the things that you don’t like or even hate doing.
Reports, Excel spreadsheets, meetings that don’t really concern you, research? They might not fit into your dream job plan, but someone has to do them, and it has to be you. Stop postponing them and realize that the sooner you get to them, the sooner they will go away. Then you will be free to do the things you actually enjoy doing.
#9. Don’t Forget About the Gaps
A jam-packed schedule doesn’t mean a perfectly productive day. Never plan back-to-back activities for yourself or your team. Sometimes your taxi won’t arrive in time, programs can stop working, you will get lost on your way to a meeting, or the same meeting might run longer than expected.
Unforeseen things can always happen, and you need to leave time slots in your schedule for them. If your activity plan for the day is tighter than it should be, then it can affect your entire productivity. It all becomes a big domino game. If one thing goes wrong or runs longer than you expected, it will throw every other activity you had planned off track.
#10. Perfection Shouldn’t Be Your Goal
Of course, as the good working bees that we are, we all strive to be perfect at our jobs. However, perfection is no sister to productivity either. It’s good to have it as your goal, but, at some point, you have to deliver the results of your work. The longer you delay it, to be able to reach the level of perfection you desire, the less productive you will be.
The road to perfection has a few stops, such as rethinking the whole plan, rewriting parts of it, and redoing some of the work, if not all of it. All these ideas mean spending a lot more time on one project than you had originally planned.
Here’s one final tip on how to be more productive during your working hours. It all starts with an outstanding mindset which speaks about waking up early in the morning and just getting things done. If you don’t appropriate this mindset as soon as possible, you can make all the plans and lists you want. They will just lay forgotten in your to-do box.