When you are organized, you have more time for everything
5 ridiculously practical tips to hack your working hours & 10x your productivity
Time is malleable. It’s flexible, yet there’s nothing you can do get even a single second extra to elongate your day.
24 hours is all you’ve got.
I was looking for an answer all these years. How are some people so well organized that they barely seem to be busy? How can someone find time for most important things, yet have time for self-realization and introspection? How someone is uber rich, and yet has a ton of time for things that matter the most? How can someone work for hours together and yet not lose the efficiency scale?
I found a connection between all these questions, which I shall share herewith.
Before I begin sharing it, let me tell a little about me, the struggle I’ve been enduring all these years and the journey till here.
Just a brief, no bragging.
I started my journey as a blogger only to realize that I need some knowledge of SEO to actually reach my target audience. This led me to learn SEO, which eventually ended up with learning digital marketing.
While I did that, I grew fond of everything that comes under the digital marketing umbrella and started to find more work to keep the meter ticking.
I found multiple clients to work with, I managed my blogs. But there was one big flaw.
I wasn’t organized.
I’d take up anything that’s immediate and had no pre-determined plans for the day.
I started digging for solutions, met people to unlock the potential and be organized to be more productive. What is it that they do to be productive, efficient, creative and yet have time for any ad-hoc task that seeks their attention.
And here’s what I’ve found…
The truth about managing time
Here’s a bitter truth.
You cannot manage time, you cannot adjust the time to meet your tight schedule. Time runs at its pace, does the thing and never comes back.
In fact, there’s nothing called time. It’s just logical representation of a sequence of events.
All you can do is adjust yourself in order to meet the deadline just at the right time. Adjust your tasks so that you can focus only on the most important ones and either remove or delegate the less important ones.
I’ve wasted a lot of time thinking ‘nothing’ but still my on-screen time was over 12 hours, every single day of the week. I’d begin my day and reach nowhere at the end of it.
I didn’t leave any stone unturned unless I realize one small, very small thing.
“Managing yourself in accordance to time is all about making decisions”
The problem I faced while managing myself
Remember I told you I found clients whom I work for. Yeah! It’s about that.
Soon after I found enough clients to get better at what I do and earn a living, I was standing in front of a pile of tasks that needed high priority attention. Each one of them is equally important to me and each of them has their own prioritized business needs.
I market their business by multiple channels. Each one of them has unique business models and hence needs a totally different mindset every time I work on their tasks.
This became really difficult to manage my time or differently put, manage myself w.r.t to time.
So here are the five things I do to bring or keep myself on track to be organized and hack my time
#1 I Create time slots
I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique, I didn’t fit in right. Let’s admit, this technique isn’t for everybody. I tried all the variations but couldn’t find anything fruitful out of this technique.
Therefore, I came up with my own version of the Pomodoro technique where I dedicate each task some time which completely is flexible. Some tasks, like creating a blog post takes anywhere around 1- 3 hours. And sometimes, creating graphics for the blog posts takes hardly 10 minutes.
I treat tasks individually so that I can clearly prioritize each one of them and assign a time slot for each one of them. Creating graphics is part of writing a blog post, but I treat each of them separately.
Works well for me.
This, of course, comes from deciding the tasks well in advance, which is pretty basic for anyone who wants to be productive and efficient with their work throughout the day.
#2 I Logically schedule my day beforehand
One of the most interesting client product I market is Highlights by Learning Paths. This tool is special to me as most of my research work is taken care by this tool.
Soon after I bagged the deal to market this tool, I realized I cannot market this with the same approach I had earlier. I already was overburdened with tasks to manage this smoothly.
Took this as a challenge and I rescheduled everything I had on my task lists and calendar to a logically grouped task lists.
Doesn’t matter if the task where of two different clients, I’d group them together. For example, social media marketing is one of the arms I take care of. I have something called ‘social media hour’ every 3 hours. In this one hour, I either prepare content for social media or actually participate in the social media platform, which mostly includes Twitter, Quora & Reddit.
Social media account I engage with depends on the task at hand. If I’m working on a task related to Highlights, I’d engage on social media profiles of Highlights and some of my own blog’s social media profile.
#3 I Begin my day early
This is the most ritualistic thing I’ve ever been able to do in my career. Though with some cheat days, I do begin my day quite early.
This idea behind this is giving my brain to some quality time to come up with ideas. These ideas then reciprocate into content for the day or get a place in my calendar for a future date.
This doesn’t directly contribute to being more productive at my work, but it does a great help at being what I am today.
You wake one hour late and you spend the whole day looking for it — Napoleon Hill
I don’t say it, Napoleon does. He believes, and it works for me.
#4 I Take actions
Plans look very beautiful until implemented. The ugliness of plans is unveiled when you get yourself dirty executing it. I’ve been in that phase when I used to plan and create action plans, roadmaps, tracker sheets, and what not.
Bringing them in action is what matters the most.
This is the stage where most of us fail and very few actually put efforts and win. Planning is important but the execution of those plans are even more important.
Executing a plan further requires a plan. If you pay close attention to your actions, you’ll understand how ignorant you’ve been while executing the plan. I’ve faced this issue a lot of times.
I’ve noticed a huge enthusiasm loss while executing the plan. That’s where you gotta be harder and push yourself. You’ll have a million reasons to procrastinate but you’ll also have one powerful reason to do it.
#5 I audit my work
Lately, I’ve understood the importance of the audit. This includes optimizing my existing content and finding topics for upcoming blog posts from various channels.
A very large portion of an audit goes in understanding the analytical data that comes in from Google search console, Google Analytics, Facebook analytics, and Google trends.
In Google search console, I find the keywords my content ranks for but not getting clicks. I take that keyword, sprinkle it around that post and republish it. Sharing it on social media also helps me boost the traffic a bit.
Google Analytics helps me understand everything other than the keywords. The gender, demographics, interests, browser, operating systems, screen resolution, language, and the list goes on and one.
Of these, ‘interests’ are the most helpful source in Google Analytics. This tells me what type of content should I make often and hence getting more and more traffic.
An audit is the second most important change I’ve implemented that has directly help me save a lot of time, in fact, assign more time for more fruitful things.
I’m a digital marketer. This is what my audit looks like. Depending on your background, the audit would vary.
#Bonus: I create content every day
I didn’t plan to have this but seems that it’s important to mention here. Creating content is what keeps me alive in the market and fruitful to my clients. It’s my bread and butter.
Creating content daily has been a habit now. Irrespective of the size, I create some content every single day. Doesn’t matter what content I create, for whom I create but I make sure I create something before I sleep.
Here are some benefits I’ve observed so far:
- I’m forced to think and hence reap something out of my knowledge
- I get better at communicating the same
- I have improved memory power by ensuring that I don’t repeat anything
- I get to get more content ideas while creating content. I get at least 3 content ideas while I create content today and that too “not stereotype”
- I get to examine myself, put my abilities to test when I’m forced to create something every single day.
I’m yet to reach a level where I’m able to publish multiple blog posts every single day. But these are some tiny baby steps, to begin with.
Final thoughts
That was on how I have changed myself to be better at utilizing the time I have. It’s not about working 20 hours a day and reaching nowhere. It’s about working 12 hours a day but inching towards the goal you have in your mind.
My goal is to have more time for things that I care for and still be productive. It is going to take time for me to reach that point. I’ll keep sharing my stories, observations, and realizations. Make sure we keep in touch.
Adieu!
