Have you ever felt like you could use another you to tackle your everyday activities? You can increase your productivity today and not even need a second you after all! Here’s 6 powerful hacks that will help your productivity shoot through the roof.
1) STOP Multitasking
If there is one thing that will absolutely kill your productivity, it is giving your brain more than one activity at a time. It sounds counter intuitive since we feel that tackling many things all at once will allow us to finish our tasks sooner, but extensive research, shows multitasking is a lot less productive than doing one single thing at a time. To top this, researchers at Standford University also found that regularly being bombarded with several streams of electronic information decrease our ability to pay attention, recall information and switch from one job to another. Since your brain can only focus on one thing at a time, it makes sense to eliminate multitasking.
2) Create a supporting environment
When you need to focus and concentrate, noisy colleagues, the printer and people passing by can become distracting. That’s why it makes sense to eliminate as many distractions as possible so you can engage in what you’re doing and achieve laser focus. Non-distracting music and a pair of headphones can go a long way and allow you to achieve your goals for the day in an easier way.
3) Prioritize your tasks
The reason why a lot of us are not performing at our best is we feel overwhelmed with the amount of activities that we have to accomplish. Journaling or even just writing our tasks in a to do list can help us stay focused on the most important tasks for the day. I myself have noticed an increase in productivity since I started a simple bullet journal. I still use my to do list on my cellphone to capture things as I remember them, but at the end of the day I transfer those activities to my journal.
4) Make time your friend and take breaks
Have you heard of the Pomodoro time management technique? You select the task you’ll work on, then you set a timer to anywhere between 15-25 mins, and you focus on that task until the timer stops. At this point you also set a timer for 5 mins or so you can take a break. When the timer rings again it’s time to start all over! Once you’ve reached 4 full Pomodoro cycles, a longer 20 min break is recommended. Your productivity is likely going to go through the roof with this technique.
5) Chunk your activities
Chunking simply means working on similar tasks around the same time. Since I mostly work from home, when I go on the road I don’t just go to work or for a meeting, I also go to the gas station, library, super market and anything I can chunk in the same trip. When I’m working on accounting for my business, I also do my wife’s business. Think of what tasks you have that would be benefited by chunking.
6) Relax and Sleep
After our hard work, our bodies need a good night sleep. While the amount of hours you need is not set in stone, you can make the most of your sleep by doing simple changes to maximize it. Keep consistent time to go to sleep and wake up, make your bedroom dark and comfortable, remove cellphones and electronic devices from your night stand, and limit exposure to TV and blue light during night time to help your biological clock prepare for night time.
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