5 Productivity Tips to Reboot Your Brain for Exceptional Efficiency!
From time to time, each of us faces the situation when they have so many thoughts that they get confused amongst them. Do you want to sort everything out, understand what is going on and outline a clear plan? Do you want the reason to rule your life instead of intuition? Use these hacks and soon everything will fall into places, and your productivity will increase significantly!
1. Let Yourself Have a Rest
Earlier, we wrote about burnout and some productivity tips to prevent it. So, if you have at least several of the signs listed below, it’s likely that you are worn out and you could use some rest urgently. Check, if you noticed any of these:
- You feel fatigued even in the morning.
- Your productivity is decreasing day after day.
- It’s hard to focus even on simple tasks.
- You can’t come up with creative solutions as you used to do earlier.
- You can’t focus on work, which causes mistakes.
- Your appetite decreased, as well as inner motivation in general.
- You start perceiving work as an enemy or as a source of negativity.
If you feel that you have no power to continue being productive, switch to “saving mode.” Not for 19 minutes between the tasks, but for at least a couple of days. Let your thoughts get structured by themselves.
After taking a long break, you will get more creative insights and be able to solve common issues.
Keep in mind nurturing stress-free habits and a healthy attitude to crisis situations at work, it will help you maintain productivity at a high level longer.
Also, don’t forget to conduct sort of a “digital detox” from time to time. We’re constantly online, and our body and mind get tired of screens and hard work. ;)
2. Consider a Sabbatical Leave
If you’ve been working for a company for several years, a couple of days break might not work. Recharging might take more time and some organisations offer their employees something as a sabbatical leave. According to the study by Opodo, where they questioned 12.000+ employees all over the world, 71% would like to recharge this way, if they had such an option. They think this would help them to:
- make themselves more employable (44%);
- feel more confident at work (35%);
- increase the prospect of earning more (24%).
Such a break can last for one or two months, while your workplace is be preserved, so you’ll be able to continue working again as if you didn’t leave at all. For example, international companies as Adobe offer 4 weeks of sabbatical to those who have been working for them for more than 5 years.
Of course, not all companies offer paid sabbaticals, so check this with your team leader or director. If they do, be sure to:
- Let everyone know about your leave in advance (in several months).
- Ask the headship when will be the best time to take sabbatical. There might be periods when a company needs its employees and it won’t be beneficial for everyone if you leave then.
- Ask whether there is any confirmed sabbatical leave policy in your company and examine the conditions.
3. Start a Journal
Journaling is a great habbit that provides a handful of positive effects. We’ve covered the topic of positivity journaling, but why not start an everyday journal of your thoughts, plans and lessons learned?
- Writing down the main checkpoints of your day helps to analyse what was done well and wrong. You have more time to think every situation over and see what could be done differently.
- This will bring all your chaotic thoughts to order and unravel the tangle of ideas that may have been gathering dust on the shelves of your subconsciousness for many years.
- If you need a piece of advice from your own experience, you might find all the right ideas in your journal.
- Some notes will surely inspire you during hard times, just travel back to old memories and find motivation.
- Comparing your recent thoughts with old notes will reveal the progress and give you self-esteem. It really works!
The greatest news is that you don’t have to make notes when you don’t feel like it. As we said in the article about positivity journaling, this activity should help, not harm. If you feel exhausted, postpone making notes to some other day when you have enough energy for analysing.
At Collabio Spaces, we are trying to help you keep thoughts in order by providing specialised templates. So, you can find one in the app and have your digital ideas with you anytime, anywhere. ;)
4. Write Down What You Have to Do
Don’t keep everything in your head, as this leads to fast burnout. Use a template, create your document or grab a piece of paper and write down all the tasks you need to tackle by hand. The hardest thing is to start doing something ambitious when even a single task seems enormous. Set achievable goals and divide the way to reach them into baby steps, it is essential.
Do you wonder what to start with? It can be a full list of your goals and tasks for the near future. Next, proceed to the following point! ;)
5. Focus Only on What is Important
When you have the full scope of things to be done, sort them by scale, importance and urgency. People’s nature doesn’t allow us to multitask for long, so we need to choose the most essential points to focus on.
It’s a good idea to use a proven approach to sorting, for example, the Get Things Done method developed by David Allen. He suggests creating several lists for everything you’ve written down in point 4:
- Trash. These can be outdated goals and plans.
- References. Store useful information that doesn’t require immediate action.
- Maybe list. Tasks that are important but can be postponed.
- Projects. Any task that can be completed in several simple steps.
Everything important that fell into the “Projects” list, can be organised as well:
- Waiting for. These are tasks you can delegate to someone else.
- Next action. Something that needs to be done but not urgently.
- Calendar. These are the most important and urgent things with clear deadlines. Your actual to-do list.
You’ll be surprised by the scope of work that you’ll end up with in your calendar — it won’t be dreadful anymore, as most things will reveal to be not very important or urgent. If you handle one task at a time, the overall effectiveness will grow and you’ll be recharging even while working!
We hope that these productivity tips will help you gather thoughts, switch attention and put yourself in order, and then get back to business with renewed vigor and inspiration. Challenges are not always impossible, they can be interesting and motivating, where you and your achievements are the main motivators.
