5 Productivity Hacks for Incredibly Busy People (YOU)

Feel like you’re just “getting by” when it comes to work? It’s not a good feeling.

Instead of feeling accomplished at the end of the day, you feel overwhelmed yet you’ve somehow achieved next to nothing.

You know that you could’ve done more, finished more tasks, crossed out a few more things off your list, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. You were S-T-U-C-K.

And while you probably have a few productivity hacks up your sleeve, they’re more of a novelty than a force of habit. No more.

We can get you sorted with the perfect space, but we also want to set you up with some tried-and-tested productivity hacks that can help you right when you need it.

Let's start with the tools.

Productivity is all about reaching your goals. And sometimes, you need tools to get there. Here are some of our faves:

RescueTime
If you’re an individual who wants to maximise the time you spend online, RescueTime is for you. This time-tracking software records how much time you’ve spent on certain websites, tasks, and applications.

It can also block distracting sites for a specific period of time so you can concentrate on work. This is particularly helpful in letting you know how productive (or distracted) you were whilst working online. Bye Bye Facebook.

Asana
Asana is a must when you’re working collaboratively with a team. Aside from using it to manage projects, Asana is also a good tool for work accountability as it lets you know who did what and for how much time. Nothing like a good ol’ tracking tool to keep you focused and on the straight and narrow.

Right, now for the tactics.

Jot it all down
You can use a pen and notebook, Google Keep, Evernote or really any word processing tool you prefer just as long as it allows you to jot down all the info that you need to remember and easily retrieve it when needed.

Don’t rely on just memory. With all the things that you have to juggle every day, it’s easy to forget stuff, even the important ones. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Then, there’s always the Matrix…

The Time Management/Eisenhower Matrix

As complicated as it sounds, this matrix is easy to understand and allows you to manage your time more effectively. It helps you distinguish your tasks using these four quadrants:

Image from Wikipedia Commons

 

As you can see, this matrix breaks your tasks into four categories:

• Quadrant 1 - Urgent and important: These are activities that require your immediate attention such as family crises, projects with tight deadlines, filing taxes, emergencies, etc.

• Quadrant 2 - Not urgent but important: These activities like exercise, learning a new skill, annual business planning, etc., although important, don’t necessarily require prompt action.

• Quadrant 3 - Urgent but not important: While these activities may seem urgent, they are not fundamentally important. They don’t contribute any value to you and your work. These interruptions can be considered as distractions and can be delegated and re-scheduled for another day. These can be phone calls, meetings, or the time spent checking your inbox.

• Quadrant 4 - Not urgent and not important: These activities don’t contribute any value at all. For some, it can be a toss up between Facebook or Netflix. And while they are certainly entertaining, they can prove to be a distraction that can hinder you from doing the more important stuff.

With this matrix, you can easily see what your priorities should be. The idea is to make sure that you have enough time to work on Quadrant 2 tasks to prevent them from moving to Quadrant 1 (as many of these tasks are Quadrant 2 in the first place if only proper planning and better time management were implemented).

Learn to say NO.

Time is your most valuable asset. Say no to people, situations, activities, and engagements that take your precious time while you gain nothing in return. By saying no you can free up your time to get more important things done. There’s no need to be rude about it, but a polite nay-sayer is an efficient one.

Bonus Tip: Plan tomorrow’s schedule, today.

Learn to plan ahead. Writing or creating your schedule the night before is one of the most effective ways to ensure a productive workday. Before you hit the sack, make a list of all your tasks for the next day. From there, you can easily organise them by order of priority.

And now over to you, get to it!

 

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