Time is money – we all know the old cliché, but if you want to know how to be productive in life, you have to actually apply it in life. Some of the best productivity hacks will ask you to work smarter not harder, with optimum use of time.
Top Productivity Hacks
Here are some of the top tips for time management. These work hacks will help you in managing time and to be more productive.
1. Don’t Let Facebook Hog your Life
If I told you to keep away from Facebook, you’d probably stop reading this right now. Rest assured, I’m not. All I’m saying is don’t spend most of your waking hours following others’ lives. Use productivity apps instead.
To be quite frank, I love Facebook myself. It helps me connect with friends and family. Being a blogger, social media is a big part of my life and I need to connect with readers on such platforms for business productivity.
- Don’t lose track of time while browsing through social media sites (you see that absolutely cute dog video and you must click on it). Believe me, I feel you!! Increase productivity by learning to say no.
- If you’d like some work hacks, don’t open such apps as soon as you get up in the morning. It could suck up your entire morning before you realize it.
- Use productivity apps and extensions that can help you resist wasting time. There are many like Kill News Feed, Facebook Unseen, SelfControl App are some of them.
2. Use To Do Lists (One of the best time management tools)
I hear you. To do lists are kind of nagging, but it helps you be productive.
A survey conducted by LinkedIn states that 63% of professionals make use of to-do lists. Yet, only 11% actually managed to finish the tasks set.
You can use the list to suit you and plan out your day’s activities. This will put you in that enviable 11% category of efficiency experts.
The GTD or Getting Things Done author, David Allen, suggests that you organize the list with plans for how and when you will accomplish it. You can use an app, but there’s always the good old paper and pen method. Works great for me.
- Jot down what you need to do whenever it strikes your mind. The best office hacks advocate not overloading your memory. You need not remember everything. I get freakish and awesome ideas all day and if I don’t jot them down, after five minutes I’m like????
- Put in details of steps to be taken, rather than goals to be achieved to increase productivity at work.
- Use words like go, email, discuss, get, buy, talk to, approach, cancel and so on to enhance work productivity.
- Categorize it into short-term and long-term tasks and prioritize them for better work management. Review lists and make appropriate changes to choices, moving it around as and when you feel necessary. For instance, you had an amazing idea at night, but it doesn’t seem so amazing in the cold light of day. Shift or even delete it from the list.
- Don’t put too many tasks. You’ll only end up disappointed with yourself.
Benefits of To Do Lists
- It increases productivity, as you get more control over work.
- You can get important tasks finished off in time.
- You get the satisfaction of having completed a task.
- More focused attention on a task so that you can manage your time better.
- Makes you manage more work in less time (that’s exactly what you want, right?).
3. Time is Money
You take great care of your money. Do you ever waste it? No way. What about your time? Well, that’s another story. You can always make money, but you cannot make extra time in a day. 24 hours is all you’ve got and you need to make the best use of it. So how to manage time better? Organize your time and automate tasks if possible:
- Urgent or emergency tasks – Get on to it right away, at least soon as you finish reading this post. For instance, it could be a work assignment that you need to complete at once.
- Not so urgent – keep a deadline and start working towards it. This could be an exercise routine, relationship problems, interviews and so on.
- Try delegation or even automate tasks on your phone. You don’t have to download all those movies and songs on your phone right now. Automate downloads and you can save time. Automate payment of bills, purchase of groceries, emails and so on.
- Not so important? Ditch them is my word of advice. A coffee break with a friend, watching YouTube videos and the like. If you’re one who cannot resist the temptation to take a peek, install blocking plugins.
4. Don’t Stay Up Late
I’m getting the feeling you’re not going to like the sound of this. Hear me out. It’s one of my top productivity tips. I’ve started on the good old ‘early to bed, early to rise’, thing and it works like a charm every time. I am up and about by 7 am in the morning and tucked into bed by around 10 pm.
Sleeping and waking hours are entirely your calls. Hey, I’m not trying to intrude here, just saying. But you can get more work done this way and still have time for play (Don’t we all want that?) It’s among the most effective time management strategies of all time.
5. Take the Plunge
The water is cold and you keep shivering and poking your toes into it, dithering over whether to take the plunge or not. But once you plunge in, it’s like what was all the fuss about? Works for productivity too. Force yourself to begin that unpleasant task at once. You’ll soon find yourself engrossed in it and may go on to work crazily after that, shooting up that productivity level.
Over to You
Phew! I’m all done here with my tried and tested productivity hacks. I get it that with so many pressures; you need to be online all the time. You’re always multi-tasking and you end up being distracted. Take heart. Try these tips and let me know if they work for you. They sure did for me.