13 timeless productivity tips

11 min readSep 16, 2021

I have had always had credibility in the teams and organisations that I have worked for, for getting things done. An invaluable trait that all well-rounded professionals should have. Getting things done is one thing, but doing it at a fast pace, consistently and getting the right things done is a completely different beast. It requires a tool kit of skills and hacks that you need to call upon.

Here is a collection of timeless and well-tested productivity tips gathered while working in different roles in different industries over the last 15 years. They have served me well and have helped me gain the reputation of someone who gets things done. Hopefully, you can make some of them your own.

▶️ Tip 1: Intense focus on one task for a short period of time.

Use the Pomodoro Technique.

💡 Constantly switching between tasks is the norm these days. Most of us are doing a few things back to back which is called “Rapid task switching”. And a majority of us do what is multi-tasking e.g. Being on a Zoom Meeting while replying to an email.

Both of which in the long term is set to drain and exhaust you mentally, not to mention the inferior quality of work that you may produce as a result of this. So why not focus on one thing and do it really well.

By intensely and intently focusing only on one task, you can beat procrastination and distractions, and improve your focus and force yourself to take short breaks to recharge yourself for a super productive day.

❗ Read this article that explains why Pomodoro really works: https://lnkd.in/dU7CgVE

▶️ Tip 2: Plan in your top 3 goals for the week on a Monday morning, because failing to plan is planning to fail!

💡 Resist the temptation to dive straight into your emails (more on this topic later), first thing Monday morning. Don’t start the week feeling overwhelmed with the “weekend” backlog. Instead, grab a coffee. Reflect on what you’d like to accomplish that week. Think of no more than 3 #goals you want to achieve.

⭐ Why 3?

- Small enough to make it seem achievable, gives you scope to accommodate other exigencies if they arise.

- If you achieve all the 3 goals, you could pat yourself on the back for a job well done and celebrate. Because if you don’t celebrate your own wins, who else will?

- Gives you plenty of space to work on the right things, at the right time, in the right way and deliver some amazing results

❗ Pro Tip: Extend this to 3 goals for the month or the day too!

This is how we run our weeks within the Customer Success team at Oaky.

Recommended by experts too — https://lnkd.in/dZ4mzRe

▶️ Tip 3: Email Chunking 📩

Your #email #inbox is someone else’s to-do list. Don’t let it get in the way of your top 3 goals of the week/day.

💡 The average office worker receives around 121 emails every workday, while they are able to send just 40 per day!

⚠️Chunking: A #process of grouping similar tasks together to increase concentration and get into the “#flow” state. #Chunking can be applied to things other than emails too.

⭐How to Chunk your emails:

- Set dedicated email hours in your calendar, where you process your inbox. (Please, not first thing in the morning). I usually process my inbox around 10am, 1pm and 4.30pm.

- If familiar with the #GTD method, process it accordingly (will share my tips on this later).

❗ Pro Tip: #Inbox0 is a myth, don’t burn yourself chasing it. If you don’t reply to every single email on the same day, it is OK.

Read more about chunking here — https://lnkd.in/dmBWgAN

▶️ Tip 4: Pimp your Gmail!

💡 With 100+ emails in your inbox each day, you have to realise, not all emails are the same and warrant the same response time from you.

⚠️ Chunking was one tip to deal with emails better. But the below tips will help you manage emails like a pro.

✅ Focus on the right email. Set up Priority Inbox -> Important and unread, Unread, Starred and Everything else.

✅ Use ‘All Stars’ and arrange them to use as a GTD system to process your emails ⚠️ ⏩ ⭐ ❗❓

✅ Use an auto text expander to type out repetitive text. Forget canned responses, that is so old school.

✅ Use Grammarly

✅ Keyboard shortcuts — Create your own or follow the basics.

✅ Use Schedule emails

✅ Connect emails to GoogleTasks/Send to yourself in slack so you can add a reminder.

✅ Use the Snooze feature

✅ Turn on “Undo Send” to prevent accidental send-outs.

✅ Mark a conversation as read to ‘Never’ — to prevent accidental I read the email and forgot to action it situation. So you can manually read an email and take it off your to-do list.

✅ Enable Preview Pane

Read more tips here: https://lnkd.in/dyxT7KK

▶️ Tip 5: Eat that damn frog!

💡 “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” — Mark Twain

⚠️ This literally does not mean eat a frog but refers to picking a task that is extremely difficult/important/you’ve been procrastinating over a lot, and deal with it first thing in the morning before you get blindsided by the rest of the day.

⭐ The upside of this is that you will start your day on a high and hopefully carry over that amazing energy and sense of accomplishment throughout the rest of the day.

Eating a frog also helps you be ruthless with your prioritisation, beat procrastination, move the needle on things that matter.

Here is what you could do:

✅ Skip checking your inbox first thing in the morning.

✅ Take 10 mins to reflect and pick your SMIT (Single most important task of the day).

✅ ATTACK IT, immediately and kill it.

❗ Pro tip: Use tip no.2 of this series — https://lnkd.in/dspaUV2

▶️ Tip 6: Find and get into a Flow State.

💡 A Flow State simply put is a feeling of being in “the zone.”

This means becoming fully immersed in whatever you are doing with such focus that it becomes effortless and drives the best results.

⚠️ The average person today gets bombarded with 41 push notifications a day, not to mention the 100+ emails in the box, constant slack and other work notifications. No wonder our attention span keeps reducing and so does the quality time spent on doing that important thing that must be done.

Here is what you could do:

✅ Pick your SMIT (Single most important task of the day).

✅ Find your peak performance time (when you are the freshest).

✅ Block your calendar and pause all notifications for those needed hours.

✅ Maybe put on a headphone with instrumental-only music (also helps with concentration)

✅ Focus only on finishing that task at hand.

I encourage everyone in the #customersuccess team to follow this method, and they all enjoy doing this.

❗ Pro tip: Use Chunking and 3 tasks a day if you have a big project to get through like I am at the moment. Usually, I listen to some classical/low beats music on Spotify/Youtube to zone out.

Read: https://lnkd.in/dgbV9bA

▶️ Tip 7: Personal Productivity Methods.

💡 Prioritisation is essential for boosting your productivity. But, none of the prioritisation frameworks will work for you straight out of the box due to your unique individual work and personal situation. Best is to try a few flavours, and then make them your own.

Some of the frameworks I’ve used in the past and taken bits I loved to make my own system are:

✅ Getting things Done

✅ MoScoW Method

✅ 3 Key Tasks per week + 1 SMIT per day(Eating the frog).

✅ Eisenhower Matrix

✅ Simple Kanban method.

✅ SMART Goals

❗ Pro tip: Pick a method, try it for a bit. Try another one. Take the best from these methods and devise your own.

Is there any framework you think I should try as well?

Personally, for me the 3 Key Tasks per week + 1 SMIT per day (Eating the frog) works the best, does not overwhelm, helps me progress at a steady pace while giving me plenty of time to deal with ad-hoc things that may crop up.

Tip 8: Create a “Shutdown Ritual”. 📴

The perfect day starts the evening before.

💡 Most people start off and continue their day like a headless chicken. Jumping from aimlessly form tasks to task. With little clarity on the key goals(SMIT), they want to achieve on a given day. As a “Shutdown Ritual”, why not the day, by reviewing the tasks that you’ve completed that day and create a list of actions/goals (SMIT) for the following day?

The benefits of doing this are:

✅ Creating a sense of #achievement and reflection for the current day.

✅ Setting yourself up for #productive start the next day.

✅ Creating #headspace to creatively think, #reflect and approach the #challenges for the next day.

✅ Leaving work with peace of mind, that tomorrow you will smash your #goals!

❗ Pro tip:

- I usually pack in a 30-min email-processing sprint at the end of each day in addition to my shut down ritual. This way, I’ve covered all/any last-minute/urgent emails.

- Personally, I have a Shutdown ritual at home too, before jumping into bed. Will share more about this later!

What is your shutdown ritual? Any tips?

Tip 9: Two Minute rule. ⏱️

💡 It’s quite common that we end up with a long list of things to do every single day! Who has never been victim to having a to-do list longer than an arm’s length?

How, cool would it be if you could slash this list by half?

The two-minute rule comes from David Allen’s Getting Things Done book. Its really simple, but very powerful. If you need less than two minutes, do it now; if not, defer it or delegate it.

Helps with:

✅ Minimizing your task list

✅ Beating procrastination

✅ Avoiding a sense of being overwhelmed by looking a long to-do list.

❗ Pro tip: Don’t multi-task, or do this in the middle of a meeting. Be polite, tell the person what you are doing and then do it.

▶️ Tip 10: Be an early bird! I know it’s not for everyone, but trust me it works!

💡 We now live in an age of rolling out of bed and straight onto our desks and starting off the day. We run through the day, end it, usually exhausted! Leaving little energy, motivation or drive to work on things that really matter! Yourself!

Starting off your day early/earlier (even if it’s only an hour before your usual time) helps you:

✅ Get prepared for the day in a #calm, collect manner. Think about what you want to achieve that day!

✅ Focus on #personalgrowth projects, #distraction free.

✅ Get in that workout, to boost #energy levels to start the day with a bang!

I am not saying you join the 5 am club, great if you can. How about the 6 am, or 7 am club instead? 🤘

My regular routine:

▶️ Wake up at 6 am, meditate, stretch, spiritual practices, work out and focus on personal growth projects.

▶️ 8 am cold shower and then plan the day.

▶️ 8:30 am: show up and work and kill it!

Creating this #dailyroutine will set you up for #success and help you nail your goals!

How does your daily routine look like and suggestions to try differently?

▶️ Tip 11: Practice self-reflection 📝

💡 Don’t get put off by the word self-reflection. You do use a mirror to get on that perfect makeup/attire on yourself, right? Why not then shine a similar mirror on yourself to improve what is under your skin? Your mind. It is a simple exercise of #thinking about what you do/did, or learnt from an #experience, what happened and (the key) what you would do differently next time you are in the same situation!

How reflecting can help you boost productivity:

✅ Boost and track professional and personal growth.

✅ Make sense of things.

✅ Challenge your own thoughts and assumptions.

✅ Give you clarity and direction on what does not work and what to do about it.

✅ Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

✅ Wearing someone else’s shoe and understanding their perspective.

My simple 2-minute daily reflection practice:

▶️ At the end of each day, pen down your thoughts of what went well and what you could have done better? I do this in my work diary.

▶️ Enact the improvements.

▶️ Repeat the process.

How do you #selfreflect?

▶️ Tip 12: Timeboxing ⏱️

💡 If it works for Elon Musk it must work for everyone!

Timeboxing is scheduling in your agenda blocks of time, where you allocate a certain amount of time to a certain task, with the intention of completing the task within the planned period.

How timeboxing helps:

✅ Help enter the flow state where we can deliver some of the most creative work, by maintaining an intense unwavering focus on a single topic!

✅ Getting more of the important/big things done.

✅ Be super productive and get more things done than usual.

Tips on Timeboxing:

▶️ Aim for getting it done, rather than getting it perfect.

▶️ Ideally, timebox your big 3 tasks of the week and “zone out” while doing these tasks.

▶️ Create a “focus zone” by switching off notification while you are in your time block.

▶️ Don’t over plan time block, keep space for sudden unplanned events.

▶️ Reward yourself/celebrate when you complete the timebox activity.

❗Pro tip: For longer timeboxes, use the Pomodoro technique to break this into smaller timeboxes.

How do you #timebox?

Read more here: this: https://lnkd.in/dBMMcbv

▶️ Tip 13: Mindfulness 🧠

💡 Don’t roll up your eyes and don’t equate mindfulness only with meditative or esoteric practices.

Mindfulness simply put, is being fully aware of your thoughts, your feelings and what you are doing at a given point in time. Several pieces of research have shown that #mindfulness can improve your #focus, attention, and ability to work — highly pertinent in workplaces these days.

How to practice mindfulness at work:

✅ Focus on one task at a time.

✅ Prioritise your important tasks

✅ Create a distraction-free work environment.

✅ Don’t judge colleagues, everyone has their struggles.

✅ Being deliberate and thoughtful in your actions and the things you do.

✅ Take regular breaks.

How mindfulness helps you at work:

▶️ Improves focus.

▶️ Helps cope better with stress

▶️ Help interpersonal relationships.

▶️ Have a better #worklifebalance

❗Pro tip: Use the previously mentioned tips and create your own mindful productivity stack!

What mindfulness practices do you follow at work?