Just a quick one for you today. I want to talk about how to improve productivity. In essence I want to show you 8 steps that you can use to increase your productivity easily, starting right now.
How To Improve Productivity In 8 Steps
- Make sure you have your priorities sorted. What do I mean by this? Set aside time to reflect on your life and to work out what is important to you. Where do you want your life to take you? What do you want from life? And how do you get there?
- Focus your energy into essential tasks. Once you have your priorities sorted, the next step is your short-term responsibilities. So you need to ask yourself this question. Out of everything I need to do, what one thing will give me the best return for my time and effort? This is where you start.
- Get rid. Go through your list and remove everything that is non-essential. Can you delegate tasks to others? Or at least put it on to a “to do” in the future list? When you come back to this list later, you will probably find that these tasks were not worth doing anyway.
- 2 things a day. Every single day, start off by completing the two most important tasks on your list. Don’t leave them till later or put them off, do them straight away. Doing this will help push your productivity through the roof.
- No more distractions! You need to train yourself to stop checking Facebook etc. Setup an email responder and mute your mobile. Removing yourself from distractions while you do your essential tasks will allow you to fully concentrate and give maximum effort.
- Try to keep it simple. All you really need to organise yourself is a pen and some paper. Write it out, don’t worry about how messy it looks and then get to it. However, if you simply need to be organised using tech, check out our list of the best productivity apps.
- One thing at a time. Until you complete a task, don’t move on to the next one. Not only does multi-tasking slow you down, it destroys your work flow and concentration. Focus on the task at hand. It might take a while, but training yourself to do so will pay dividends in the long-term.
- Make time to reflect. We finish as we started. Take the time to reflect on what you did that day. Did you achieve your goals? What could you have done better? The next day, use that information to improve your productivity.