Here are my favorite tips that help me get 200% more done. They revolve around getting rid of distractions, the most important one is to …
Whether you’re building a business or working in a company, being clear on your priorities is very critical to achieve your long term goals. In the short term, your daily productivity affects how fast or slow you reach those goals.
It’s true that any goal worth achieving is worth achieving in any time frame, fast or slow. There’s little need to feel in a rush if you are striving for a truly important goal. That said, improving your productivity can help you succeed faster and give you satisfaction.
Here are the best productivity tips, based on my experience and what I’ve learned from mentors:
Table of Contents
1. Make a Morning Routine
Here is the top tip that I’ve implemented in my life and has boosted my productivity by more than 200%. I can get tasks done in half the time once I have a morning routine.
A morning routine is a habit you do each morning that prepares you for the day. My routine consists of a seven minute meditation and a half hour reading session.
The meditation helps me to be centered, anchored, and ready for the tasks that day. The reading helps me to build a foundation that can grow into the future.
Once I have done this routine, any distractions during the work day becomes less destabilizing. Since the groundwork has been built, I can maintain focus and keep sight on the priorities and objectives in the middle of tasks that pop up.
You can create a morning routine however you like. It can be exercise, praying, or reading like me.
The purpose of this habit is to work on yourself first, invest on yourself first, before working for other people or investing in the tasks they want done.
2. Say No To Unimportant Tasks
By investing in yourself first through a morning routine, you respect yourself. Another way to respect yourself, your time and energy, is to say no to unimportant requests.
When you are working on your priorities, another task might come up that is unimportant or carries little impact towards your progress. Saying no to it helps you save resources to focus on your main priority.
If it’s in the work place, you might be uncomfortable to say no to this request. You can say that you are currently working on a priority, and you can ask the person to delegate to another worker. You can say that you will work on it later, or another time, if it’s possible.
If you run your own business, unimportant tasks can be delegated. Some distractions might occur that look shinier than your current task. You ought to say no to these distractions too.
As long as you are working on a priority task, saying no to other tasks that pop up, or saying you will delegate or work on them later, is respecting your time and energy.
3. Differentiate Between Important and Urgent
Some tasks are urgent, but not important. Urgent can feel like important, but it’s not the same. There are urgent and important tasks, and also important but not urgent tasks.
Stephen Covey emphasizes the importance of this distinction in his four quadrants. You can block your progress by working on tasks that are urgent but not important.
How do you know if a task is important? Ask yourself does the task have impact on your long term goals, or is it only taking care of an emergency in the short term? If it has impact, then it’s an important task that deserves your time and attention.
It’s inevitable that urgent tasks will pop up during your day. Either delegate them to another person, or have a system where you know when and where to deal with these urgent matters.
4. One Task at a Time
Saying no to unimportant tasks is part of working on one task at a time. We live in a strange society that rewards “supermoms” for being able to multitask. But the truth is that no one actually does multiple tasks at the same time, we are always only working on one task.
Even if you feel you are great at “multitasking,” it’s hugely more efficient to work on one task at a time. Especially if it’s a task that is important and has impact on your progress, then it’s worth dedicating the proper time and attention to it.
Else, you would be doing a half-baked job and building a half-baked future.
It might feel that you are missing out when you’re not multitasking. Doing one task at a time, doing each one properly until you finish it, might seem slow in the short term. But in the long term, that’s how you move forward and reach your priority goals.
5. Done is Better Than Perfect
A cliche that is correct. Sometimes, we burden ourselves with unnecessary sub-goals towards our main goals. We want to achieve a certain result, but we want to achieve it a certain way too.
If we let go of how and when we achieve our goal, then we experience less stress when working on it. We aren’t attached to how we want to achieve it, even though we try to obtain it through the path we believe is the fastest.
The path to success will always not be in the shape or way you expect it to.
An example is if you want a person to understand what you want. That person can understand it, in their own time frame. You may need to change the words you use, and keep changing it, until you find the phrase that clicks with them.
If you want it perfect, you get upset about them not understanding within a certain time, or after you repeat what you say. Instead of getting upset, let go of this attachment and see how it can get done regardless of how it gets done.
Getting Rid of Distractions
You can see that the top productivity tips I share are basically about eliminating distractions. Make a morning routine so you can keep focused when distractions appear.
When they do appear, say no. Unless it’s important, say no. Work on one task at a time to focus and not get distracted. Let go of attachment to how you get the goal you want.
Simply through the process of elimination, via negativa, you can boost your productivity by 200%.
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