4 Simple Psychological Tricks to Boost your Productivity

Everyone has had one of those days where you’re just “not feeling it”. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed, stub your toe on the bathroom door, and then the water runs cold halfway through your shower.

Of course, not all of those things always happen all at once, but you can be pretty sure at least one of them will happen now and then. It doesn’t exactly set you up with a positive outlook on the day ahead, does it? And if your brain doesn’t get off to a good start, neither does your productivity.

As someone who is beyond the realms of clumsy (I’m not kidding, I miraculously managed to over my own feet and fall flat on my face last week), I’ve learned a few “tricks of the trade” when it comes to using psychology to boost your productivity. Which is basically another way of saying, I’ve learned how to get the work done when I have absolutely no inclination to get any work done and would rather wrap up in a blanket and watch Netflix for the day.

Since I’m somewhat of an authority on the subject, I thought I’d share those tricks with you, because I’m not exactly a snowflake in this situation. Everyone has “off” days every now and then. And yes, sometimes it’s good to take the day off and recharge, but that’s not always possible. And if you power through regardless you’ll be so proud of yourself at the end of the day it’ll be 100% worth it.

In fact, sometimes I think the work I do on those days is the work I’m most proud of. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a bunch of boring admin or a blog post I’ve worked really hard on, just doing “something” when your brain is working against you is a feat in itself. And tricking your brain into working for you when it’s being so uncooperative is something you should be super proud of.

So, let’s get to it. I’m going to share some of my favorite psychological tricks for boosting your productivity and motivation throughout the day. I’d absolutely love to hear what you think about them and please let me know if if you have any of your own too!

1. Break Down Deadlines and Achieve Your Goals

When I say small. I mean super small. If you’ve ever watched the movie/mini-series “The Borrowers” (maybe not if you’re in the US, but that show was a rite of passage in Ireland when I was growing up!), we’re talking THAT small when it comes to creating actions to achieve your goals. As for the show, just follow that link to the trailer if you want a quick reference! But save it for later please, remember, it’s focus time now!

Here’s an example of what I mean. You might write on your To-Do list this evening to “go to the store” tomorrow and set a Reminder so it pops up in Buckets the next day. But think about that for a minute. You are just going to the store. What happens when you get there? What do you need? Are you hungry?

For the love of all that is good in the world, if you are hungry in the store — turn back, TURN BACK NOW. It’s for your own safety. Those junk snacks littered around the checkout take no prisoners, and without a shopping list you’re going to come home with 10 bars of chocolate, a few bags of chips, jellies… and not one single thing for dinner unless you’re planning a “let’s all get diabetes dinner party”.

So how can you do things differently?

It’s simple. Just go one tiny step further and make a Buckets Checklist outlining all the items you need to get. You can create as many Checklists as you like so I personally like to arrange them by food aisle. There’s nothing worse than running around from one store to the other like you’re on some kind of scavenger hunt when you have a dinner to prep and work to get done.

So, to give you a quick visual, you might have a grocers you hit up for local produce with a list of everything you need there, followed by going into the butchers with another list, and then finishing up in your local supermarket for what’s left. With a Checklist in hand, those checkout aisle goodies won’t be as tempting because you’ll know you already have everything you need. Although let’s be real, one little snack never hurt anyone!

Another super useful thing about creating your weekly/monthly shopping list like this is that once it’s done you can duplicate it as many times as you need in Buckets, so you’ll always have the basic necessities ready to go. Sure, you’ll need to change it up now and then, but that’s super easy to do and takes far less time when writing down a brand new list each time on your notepad!

2. Eat The Freakin Frog

I’m all for easing into the day with a few easy tasks, but it’s important that you work on that one task you’ve been avoiding ASAP. Otherwise, it’s going to hang over your head until suddenly the day is over and it rolls into the next. We all have one of those tasks. You know the one that you move from “today” to “tomorrow” in your Buckets columns about 10 times over?

That’s a serious drain on your productivity and mental energy whether you realize it or not, because the stress of getting it done is always at the back of your mind. And you need that energy for other things, like being creative and as productive as possible. Bit of tough love here folks: it’s time to get it done!

3. Plan your Day in Advance

I personally cannot go to sleep without having a to-do list ready to go for the next day. As someone who works from home and can technically just “keep working” all night, this to-do list keeps me sane! It’s how I switch off. If my to-do list is done for the day, I’m done for that day.

By planning each day in advance (and I mean a general plan, not mapping out every hour of your day) you can take control of your time so that you have some valuable time to yourself when you’re not working or thinking about work. And you know the people who don’t do this? They burn out. Fast. And even if they don’t burn out, you can be sure as heck they’re not happy.

A study I came across recently (“came across” meaning thank you Google for your neverending wisdom) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology studied two groups of students who were told to hand in their assignments the day after Christmas. The first group received clear instructions for the assignments such as when and where they would complete the work. The second group, however, were not given these clear instructions.

I bet you’re going to be really surprised with how this one turned out (spoiler alert: no, no, you are not). A total of 70% of the students who planned ahead successfully submitted their reports, but out of the group who didn’t plan ahead… only 30% made the cut. If this surprises you, I’d like to welcome you to a place I also often frequent myself; it’s called “Denial”. But don’t worry, you’ll be flying out of that place in no time once you’ve started implementing the tricks we’re chatting about here!

Making a plan in advance helps you to prioritize your tasks according to urgency and focus on what’s most important to you each day.

When you start whizzing through those tasks, and especially when you eat the nasty frog, your brain changes gears and starts to think “Whoa, maybe ‘we’ve got this!”. And there you go, brain trickery in motion.

If you really want to beat your brain at the procrastination game, you need to start using a task management system like Buckets to do all of what I’ve said above. A pen and paper won’t cut it. We live in a digital world.

4. Unless You’re Will Smith, Your Willpower is NOT Unlimited

You’ve seen the YouTube clips, that guy is so full of energy I’m convinced he lives on a diet of coffee, energy drinks, and candy floss (who wouldn’t be happy from eating candy floss??). Ah, I love Will. But he’s superhuman — you’ve seen “Hancock”, right? If not, stick it on your Buckets “to watch” list. Trust me on this one.

There’s a super important psychologist called Roy F. Baumeister who recently studied willpower and the concept of “ego depletion”. But don’t worry if you haven’t heard of him, he’s no Will Smith. And anyway, Dr.Phil gets more recognition than 99% of the actual psychologists doing actionable work here (apologies to any Dr. Phil fans out there, but you get the drift).

Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has spent years studying the idea of willpower and ego depletion. One of his most famous experiments involved presenting a group of test subjects with chocolate and radishes and asking them to choose between them before trying to complete a tough puzzle. Sounds a bit odd, right? But there was a method to his madness.

The results of the study showed that the people who used their willpower and chose radishes over chocolate, quit the exercise before the people who went for the choccy. See what we’re getting at here? The peeps who chose the radishes started to run out of willpower during the task and all they had to snack on were…. radishes. Eh, yum? But the people who had chocolate on standby had the extra delicious sugary hit to help them keep going until the end. I mean, I still think they should have gone with candyfloss, but each to their own.

From this experiment, the psychologist concluded that willpower is indeed something that we can run out of, i.e. a finite source. Every day you wake up, you have a limited amount of willpower that is depleted with every decision you make throughout the day — and also every temptation you resist! Armed with this knowledge you can make a conscious effort to save your willpower for the things that actually matter such as important tasks and decisions and anything that’s a priority on your to-do list (scroll back to planning your day in advance to cover this one!).

Final TruthBomb: You Alone Are Responsible For Your Own Productivity

By implementing these small steps into your everyday routine, you cannot only trick your brain into being more productive but also normalize how you organize your day in this manner so it becomes common nature, no more brain trickery needed! If you don’t utilize these tricks, nothing will change. It’s that simple. So, what’s it going to be?

Thanks For Reading!

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