Increasing productivity is an important part of your self-improvement routine. You need to work on you to become a more productive person to achieve more in less time.
Here I would like to share some small part of the thing you can do to improve your productivity.
1. When you are most productive for the specific tasks
Probably you already have noted that some of your tasks you can do in a specific period. In another time period, you can not do these tasks. So, if you want to become a more productive person, you will need to start analyzing your behaviors.
These time-periods for specific tasks are called as peak times. So, you need to figure out what are your peak times for getting specific things done. Start making a to-do list, and analyze the time when you feel most productive.
2. Get rid of as much as possible stuff in your environment.
Many times we are surrounded with the stuff that we don’t frequently use on the everyday level. More things around you will make you less productive and will burn out your energy. If something is not necessary to be close to you, merely trash it or remove somewhere that you will know it will be when you need it.
3. Use daily goals to do things that will help you achieve them
The most productive persons have three type of goals: annual goals, monthly goals, and daily goals. If you design your goals in such a hierarchy, you will quickly start planning for your day before it arrives. Your daily goals will help you to achieve monthly goals. When you achieve monthly goals from the other side, you will reach your annual goals.
4. Commit to your goals
If you want to become a more productive person you will need to become accountable. You will achieve this if you commit to your goals.
Start telling other people around you about your plans to do things you need to do. Write your commitment on a piece of paper relate it with the gains you will get if you achieve the goals.
5. Everyday work on your self-improvement
You need to be motivated to improve yourself and you will do this if you put in your had that you are never good enough. There will always be space for self-improvement. Continuously try to find ways to improve your techniques and methods of doing things. If you succeed in this, you will increase your productivity.
Start educating yourself. Read different books that will make you better. Give yourself one goal to read minimum one book on the monthly level. When you learn something new from the books implement itine your daily routine.
6. Use daily reviews of what you have done
The review of your progress isan important part of self-improvement and increasing productivity. You need to be honest when you make such reviews. Only in such a way, you will know what you have done well and where you will need to improve in order to do better tomorrow.
7. Learn how to use your email effectively
Don’t start your day with checking your email client. I know that you expect something important, but if it is send through email, probably it is not such an important thing. Simply don’t allow to other people to set you priorities. You are the person who will need to set your own priorities.
Start your email client in the afternoon and try to clean your email inbox on a daily basis. You can check Astro Mail if you want to increase your productivity in dealing with emails.
8. Make daily exercise your daily routine
Exercising is not only good for your health, but also they can increase your productivity. You will become a more focused person if you feel healthy and strongly. On the other side, such exercise will help you to remove for some period of time from your daily tasks.
9. Use batching to do more things at once
Probably you have many tasks that are similar, use similar processes to be done or can be done at once. If this is the case, you will need to group your tasks in batches so you will complete similar tasks together in batches. This will helps you to get more time that you will usually lose by task switching. Use this process to handle things like writing, email processing, phone calls, or errands.
10. Cut your to-do list as much as possible
In my own experience, we always try to do as much as a possible thing. Many years ago my to-do list was full with unfinished tasks on a daily basis. This was because I was making the list without having in mind that I can not done all of this things in the time I have available. Think about how much tasks you will need to do? Use prioritization to work on most important things and if there is a time for other things then start doing them.
11. Create a system that you will execute
Having a system in place means that you have developed your processes, procedures and steps for doing your daily tasks. Systems exist to help you to be more productive, to know how to do something and to help you to improve the system and yourself. For example, if we take email management as a task, you can setup three time slots in a day that will do such a task. Additionally, your system can define that you will focus on the most important (priority inbox) emails as a first.