Since we have to perform countless tasks every day, meet deadlines and follow plans precisely (not to mention the time needed for rest and entertainment) you’d probably wondered whether it’s possible to catch up with everything at all.
When the sixth cup of coffee in two hours seems to have no effect and there are more to-do lists than tasks themselves, it’s probably high time to review your approach to productivity.
Here’s a list of 8 productivity rules which might help you make your performance better.
1. Control Your Health
Being healthy is actually a major factor of productivity. Your main actions must be directed at sufficient sleep, balanced diet and regular physical exercises. If followed permanently, all of this adds nearly sixty per cent to the overall productivity and brings a feeling of both mental and physical fitness.
2. Make Daily Plans
Defining a clear agenda and most importantly, writing it down, is usually the key to doing everything on time. With a visible perspective of what is to be done during the day things are more likely to be really done. Not to mention our memory which tends to forget about important things (especially the ones we do not want to do).
3. Define Priorities
Make a clear division of tasks – there are usually the ones that can wait, while the others are urgent. However, people often tend to focus on less important tasks, as they require less effort and concentration.
4. Work In Most Productive Hours
Most people work better in the mornings, with productivity gradually decreasing in the course of the day. As a rule, productivity does fluctuate during the day. You’d probably noticed that there are hours when you work faster and better. Try to perform the most complicated and urgent tasks exactly in these hours to feel less fatigue and stress afterwards.
5. Have Frequent Breaks
It’s good for both your body and brain to change activities frequently. Go for a short walk outside, take a look at what’s going on in the hall, observe people in the street – let yourself distract and relax a little. It works well for increasing productivity.
You might develop your own system – e.g., 5 min break after 1 hours work.
6. Stop multitasking
Performing many tasks at once is exhausting and disappointing. You can rarely expect good results on that tasks. Most often, you end up with none of them done properly. So the best solution is to prioritize and define a consequence – what should be done in the first place and what can wait till later.
7. Develop routine
It might seem dull advice at first – no one likes routine work. Still, it makes a reliable springboard of moving ahead and contributes to a healthy lifestyle. It’s good however, to change it from time to time and bring more diversity into work. Also consider developing productivity rules of your own.
8. Add some technology
These days there is a whole variety of time management and time tracking software which you can use to control and organize your time better. There are two major benefits of using it.
First, it’s harder to convince such software that yes, I answered my emails because they’re really important and can’t wait until tomorrow and the project that is due in a few days can be left for later. So you won’t be self-deceiving any longer.
Secondly, it provides you with a real-time, objective data on how you work – and having it at your disposal means you can make right decisions on increasing your productivity.
Consider taking these productivity rules into account to make your work greater than ever.
