5 effective ways to be more productive, not harder

If you belong to the glorious tribe of workaholics who stay up late at work or at home in front of the monitor, which work on weekends and holidays, then this article is for you. In it, you will learn five effective ways that will allow you to spend less time and get more done. At the same time, they are simple and easy to do, therefore they are available to everyone, regardless of the type of activity.

1. Review the work with to-do lists

One of the counterintuitive but highly effective methods for dealing with routine is to limit the number of tasks you add to the list. Instead of trying to plan your every move by creating mind-boggling multi-level lists, just list the top three things to do for each day … There are only three, but those that are really important to you and which you will definitely follow.

If you have time left after completing priority tasks, then it can be spent on less priority ones. They will remain at the end of the day and can be completed without much stress and even with a sense of relief that the main work has already been done.

The second tip for lists is that they are better. make up the night before … Before going to bed, we often think about tomorrow and what we have to do. So why not immediately write down your plans on paper or electronic media? By doing this, you can start working immediately tomorrow, and not waste precious morning hours trying to figure out where to start.

One more tip - focus on just one day … No, no one argues about the need for long-term planning. But cluttering up the list with a lot of tasks makes us worry and grab onto everything. Therefore, select the Today list separately and focus only on it. It would be prudent to have one global list for all your tasks, from which every evening move the three most important to do tomorrow.

2. Measure your results, not time

In general, people are used to measuring the amount of their work precisely by the hours spent on it. This leads to the emergence of a stable connection - "I have worked for a very long time today, which means I have done a lot." In fact, this is not the case, and in order to be convinced of this, it is necessary to start taking into account the real results, and not the time.

For example, if you work with mail, you allocate one hour of time for this. But this does not mean at all that you will do something traveling during this time, you will just waste time in the mail client. It is much better to set the task a little differently: "now I will look through 100 unread emails" or "now I will answer 10 clients." Do you feel the difference? You are doing specific things, not just spending time at work.

3. Develop habits to get started

The beginning of the working day is the most valuable and, at the same time, the most dangerous time. It is dangerous because it seems that the whole day is still ahead, there is no rush, and you will have time to do everything. So why not grab a coffee first, check out Facebook, chat with coworkers? We didn’t have time to look back, and already noon and the most productive hours were wasted.

The solution to this problem may be to develop special habits that will help you quickly tune in to the working mood. A kind of morning ritual that will signal your body and brain to get to work. It can be anything, any sign that is understandable and convenient for you. For example, if you have a cup of coffee in the morning, then immediately after it ends, you put off all extraneous activities and start tasks. This is the trigger, the point of reference that turns on your work mode.

4. Look for where you are wasting time

The most powerful and most amazing way to help you become more productive is by tracking your working time. No complicated tools are required for this. You just need to put any timer next to you and start it every time you start a task. They went to smoke, decided to call, turned to an outside site - put the timer on pause. Returned to work - turned on.

I assure you, looking at the time at the end of the day will blow your mind. After that, you want to know in more detail where your precious working time is actually going. After analyzing this data, you can already take measures to remedy the situation. Remember that it is not the one who works faster that does more, but the one who does not waste time on nonsense.

5. Develop habits to help you finish work

Sometimes it can be just as difficult to finish a job as it is to start. Yes, there is no sense in such hard work, yes, you are tired and you can get it right, but it’s so hard to break away and leave everything until tomorrow morning! And the next morning you feel overwhelmed and squeezed, so where can you work productively …

Hemingway gave good advice in this regard. He says that “you should finish the work at a time when it is moving well with you, and you know for sure its continuation. Stopping in the middle of a project can be very helpful: you know what you have done, you know exactly what you will do next, and you will be happy to start again. If you have reached a dead end and stopped, then the next day you will have to look for a way out of it.

Set the exact time for the end of the working day. Of course, this applies mainly to remote workers and freelancers, who often stay up late into the night. It will be beneficial for them to develop the habit of closing the laptop at the same time, no matter what happens. Another incentive to adhere to the work schedule will be if you plan for the end of the day some important and, preferably, pleasant activity that cannot be missed.

As you can see, the secret of productive work is not at all to sit out everyone at work or not get up from the monitor at home. All you need is a little organization, self-discipline, and following the tips in this article to make your workday shorter and your to-do list longer.