Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all the matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. -Steve Jobs
A lot of factors go into determining the outcome of a task. What spurs you to do your best work? Are you most active and alert during the early hours of the day? Or do you find ease and calm in a quiet environment? Perhaps you’re most comfortable with music playing in the background. Whichever it is, find what works for you, and at the same time, do not be afraid to try out new things.
Here are a few tips that help to improve productivity:
- Identify your most productive time of day: This has been proven by experts to be effective. Plan your day from the moment you wake up every morning. If you’re the type that is productive in the morning, go to bed early the night before so you wake up bright and alert. Freshen up quickly, sit at your work desk and work. If you are most productive during the day or late at night, align your tasks for that moment and tick off tasks as you go.
- Set daily goals: Plan your day the night before, right down to the number of hours it’ll take to complete a given task. Allow room for unforeseen circumstances and emergencies as well. Keeping a physical and not mental list is more efficient as you get to tick them off physically. It helps you stay motivated instead of being overwhelmed and forgetful. A number of phone and desktop applications such as Evernote, Trello, Todoist, and hundreds of similar software help you set goals and track your progress, or you could decide to go traditional and stick to pen and paper, but ensure you write it out! Carry out the Eisenhower Matrix, or the Urgent-Important Matrix. For every task you have, when you’re creating your daily to-do lists: create a table;
- What is important and urgent?
- What is important but not urgent?
- What is urgent but not important?
- What is not important and not urgent?
Answer these questions and prioritize based on these. A weekly review at the end of the week will serve as a yardstick to measure success and areas of improvement.
3. Eradicate all forms of distraction: Major sources of distraction these days stem from social media and other digital sources. Ensure you mute any form of distraction and dedicate a few hours of your time, this could be a bit difficult to stick with, but here’s where discipline comes in. You need to prioritize and conclude on what matters most to you.
4. Stay nourished and hydrated: Breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day, a healthy breakfast keeps you sharp and your stomach full for over five hours, and you ordinarily wouldn’t think of food till lunchtime, which is a perfect time to take a break, a nap, or a walk. Remember to stay hydrated as well.
5. Employ the Pomodoro technique: It is a time management method developed by Francesco Crillo in the late 1980s. It’s essentially breaking down your work into intervals, usually, 25 minutes in length, paused by short breaks, traditionally 5 minutes. This technique is important because it helps you resist the urge to interrupt your work and disciplines your mind to focus. During the 5-minute break, you could take a walk, stretch, organize, hydrate, finding a few quality ways to spend your break from your main task can go a long way to helping you ultimately complete your set goals.
You would not be able to apply these methods if you do not actually take that first step. Knowledge without application is futile.
