10 Productivity Tips From More Than 50 Productivity Books
What are you doing when you come across my post? Surfing Facebook, chatting with friends, or working?
What are you going to do right after reading this blog? Continue surfing Facebook, chatting with friends, or start doing something different?
It’s your choice.
Hi, I’m Jenny, a Marketing Specialist at Unstatic Company. We analyze and provide people with productivity applications. My interest in productivity came when I read the first productivity book “The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business” (Charles Duhigg). Since then, I have been reading over 50 books about productivity and here are 10 tips to work effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the best results.
- Create your good habits & goals and strictly keep track of them
Instead of rebuilding your habit & goal everyday, which is time-wasting, you should create and stick to your daily habit schedule and targeted goals, tell yourself to finish all of them by the end of the day.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. We can become excellent thanks to our good habits” - Aristotle
2. Don’t wait for others to set your deadline, do it yourself
I’m sure lots of you used to be given deadlines for tasks and assignments in school and university. Even those doing a specific job, not all of whom choose to set their own deadlines or basically don’t have the confidence to do it. But successful people don’t wait; they always keep pushing themselves out of the comfort zone. The key is to be proactive, not passive.
“A goal is a dream with a deadline” - Napoleon Hill
3. Start to think in a more productive way
Don’t wake up and just speak to yourself: “Oh! Another tiring day!” or “Why are there so much things to do?”.Control your mind and think differently: “I’ll start with this, then this, then this, so I can have leisure time or go out with my friend”. Believe me, after you have finished all the work, you’ll feel extremely fresh and satisfied: “Wow, what a productive day!” and have the motivation to do it the next day.
4. Focus on your strength, not your weakness
Everyone is good and bad at something and people often try to figure out the way to improve the weakness. But why don’t we improve our strength instead? This is important, having strength means that you have the basic skill and knowledge about it, you will know correctly how to improve it, that growth will be significant.
“Forget your weakness, increase your strength and be the most awesome you, that you can be” - Tim Fargo
On the other hand, you have to build the foundation to improve your weakness, everything is new and it takes time to identify solutions. But once you nail it, it can help elevate your strength. Remember. Focus on your strength.
5. Decide what to do first by following Eisenhower’s Principle
Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle helps you quickly identify the activities that you should focus on, as well as the ones you should ignore.
“What is important is seldom urgent. What is seldom is seldom important” - Eisenhower
When you use this tool to prioritize your time, you can deal with truly urgent issues, at the same time working towards important, longer-term goals.
Priority level reduces from 1 to 4. Remember to manage works that are important and urgent, limit works that are not important or urgent. In addition, rank tasks by importance, not the order you received them.
6. Always keep track of your goals
Instead of setting a vague goal such as: “Finish the project by Friday” so you will do nothing Tuesday, Wednesday and rush to finish it in Thursday, it’s not productive at all, you should keep track of your goals, ask yourself how many percents of the task you have done and keep doing until it’s finished.
7. Avoid interruptions and distractions
Interruption and distraction seem to be two of the biggest obstacles to productivity. Just imagine you are focusing on the project and a chatterbox comes out of nowhere and starts talking about stuff that doesn’t matter. The result is you forget where you were and it takes 30 minutes to get back on track. Avoid these by telling people around you that you need to work in advance and shutting down all the digital devices to focus on the job.
8. Start your day earlier
This is basically the most effective way to “hack” productivity. When you wake up early (5 – 6 AM), your productivity and happiness level will increase significantly. Why? Because very few people wake up that early to disrupt you from what you want to do. Use this time to do exercise, meditate, make a good start for your day.
9. Plan your day the night before
“Success starts with planning and prepping the night before. Plan tonight to win tomorrow and own your life.” - Craig Ballantyn
Rather than taking a chunk of your morning trying to plan your day, leave all the planning to the prior night.
10. Recharge your battery
Last but not least, don’t forget to relax. Get enough sleep to start a new successful day.
Well, here are 10 tips for you to make it to the highest level of daily productivity. I hope you’ll get the best results.
If you need a tool to make your work more productive, you can try Nirow. Visit https://nirow.me for more details.
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