It can be challenging to find a work/life balance, and sometimes, it can dishearten you. When you sit and think about your most significant concern for you thriving in your businesses and careers, the answer is always the same, Productivity and Efficiency.
Get Organized
Getting organized and staying organized is certainly one of modern life’s challenges. Highly organized people are not born that way, they develop habits and behaviors over time until being organized is second nature. There is lots of advice out there, but it has to be something that works for you.
This is because we have habits and routines and times of day when we operate at our best. It is about mastering the best parts of your own productivity, but there is always room for improvement.
Optimizing your efficiency is a skill that needs to be refined.
Time is a fairly distributed resource as we all get the same time, but it’s about how we manage it and make time for what matters to us most.
Your One Week Self Observation Challenge
Stop Multitasking
There is basically no multitasking. We can not do two things simultaneously.
What we consider as multitasking is actually our brain jumping in between different tasks.
As you can imagine, this is extremely exhausting and leads to less productivity.
You will actually never get more done through multitasking. Instead, try monotasking.
Keep your focus on one single thing at a time. Being focused and highly concentrated is a type of deep work, and this is actually the point where we can reach peak productivity and deliver efficient results.
Leveraging Time
Besides multitasking, leveraging your time is a great idea to make the most out of every minute. Leveraging your time basically means making use of your spare time.
For instance, you can use every minute while commuting to work, cooking, cleaning up, or doing sports to educate yourself. Especially audiobooks and podcasts are a great way to use all these hours instead of wasting them. Through leveraging time, you can make sure to stay inspired, generate new ideas, and educate yourself as much as possible.
Once you start using all your spare time, you will realize how much it actually is.
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Set Deadlines
Set yourself deadlines for everything you do. Not setting deadlines often results in spending way too much time on something and costs you more energy than actually necessary.
Use Parkinson’s’ Law to make sure not to waste too much time on a single task.
Parkinson’s Law basically indicates that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
If you schedule three hours for a meeting, it will take three hours, even if it could have ended earlier. However, if you schedule 30 minutes, you need to get the important stuff done in these 30 minutes.
Prioritize Tasks
Knowing your priorities is crucial for efficient time management.
Only if you know what your focus is can you use your time wisely.
The Eisenhower Matrix is one easy way to set your priorities and allocate your time accordingly.
What also works for me is to categorize my to-do’s.
There are actually the following categories on my to-do list: short-term income-producing activities, activities that define my long-term business success, and organizational tasks/research/self-development. Through this categorization, I can define the importance of any new task and decide when I will complete it and how much time I want it to cost me.
Remove Distractions
Removing any distractions is the key to high productivity and good time management.
If you get distracted all the time, you will have no chance to work efficiently.
Especially keep your workspace tidied up so that you can work without distraction once you get to work.
You should not waste any time on distractions once you sit at your table and want to be productive.
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Keep Your Mind Fresh
Sometimes we get crazy because we want to be more productive and more efficient and manage our time better.
However, sometimes taking a deep breath is the key to getting more done.
If you want to manage your time better, make sure to keep your mind fresh and energized.
Putting too much pressure on yourself will not result in efficiency but rather in stressing out.
Whenever you feel like you need it, get outside for a short walk and some fresh air to energize yourself. This will help you to be more focused and productive once you get back to work.
Also, make sure to give your body all that it needs. Hydrate yourself well and take care of getting all the nutrients that your body needs to perform well.
Work When Most Productive
It is not really possible to be 100% focused and efficient all the time.
We all have our peak productivity times throughout our days.
For you, this can be early in the morning or late at night — you have to find it out.
In my case, I realize that I often have a decrease in productivity in the afternoon. So this is the perfect time for me to hit the gym to focus again and work later in the evening.
Once you find your productivity peaks, you can allocate your whole day according to it and work much more efficiently.
Put your important, creative, and producing tasks into your productivity fields. Additionally, fill the time in which you don’t feel productive with organizational and administrative tasks.
Set Reminders
Setting reminders is a great way to declutter your mind and stay focused.
You can actually set a phone reminder for anything in your life.
Whenever something pops up in your mind, instead of immediately doing it, set a reminder for later.
If you don’t want a phone alarm, simply use post its.
Whenever I want to work in a highly productive and undisturbed manner, I have a big post it right beside my laptop to take notes of everything that comes up in my mind.
Instead of interrupting my work, I just write it down, put it out of my mind and check it later.
Turn Off Notifications
Turning off notifications and all pop-up messages is so important for your productivity.
Even if you don’t react to it, just seeing a notification on your screen kills your focus and can be a distraction for many minutes.
Being in a deep work mode with full concentration should be your ultimate goal to be absolutely efficient with your time.
However, it can take you up to 20 minutes to get back to your focus if you get distracted during these deep work sessions.
This is a pretty high price that you have to pay for a stupid push notification on your screen.