5 Easy Habits that Make Me More Productive
Productivity is important because it makes you get more done in a short time. It helps you to have some time you can spend on the things you love to do just like listening to the music.
For anyone who wants to be more productive, I’m going to share 5 super important tips that can help you to be more efficient with your tasks and targets.
Are you continuously trying to be more productive and more efficient? YES?! Keep reading!
WATCH: 5 SIMPLE HABITS FOR A MORE PRODUCTIVE LIFE on YouTube
1. Habit Stacking
What is habit stacking?
I learned about Habit Stacking in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Take the habit that you’ve already created and add a new habit at that same time. — It makes it easier to make that new habit a strong habit.
Let’s say you are thinking that, “yeah I wanna make a habit of doing exercise daily.” or maybe doing dishes every day or cleaning the kitchen every day, whatever it is.
Creating a new habit can be very difficult. In the beginning, you are pumped up and motivated but then by day 5 you forgot or have lost your motivation. So, a great way to ensure that you stay productive and ensure that you do that habit continuously is “habit stacking”.
Since you are already used to doing the first habit regularly, it will trigger you to adopt the “new” habit.
Here are some examples:
Say you brush your teeth daily before bed, it’s your habit. You don’t have to remind or push yourself to do this. Now take another habit to do right next to brushing your teeth, say it’s doing some squats or pushups or maybe cleaning up the bathroom.
Another example is every time you make your morning coffee: you empty the dishwasher. It’s a good habit to stack on top of it because you already have a habit of making coffee in the morning and it can easily trigger you to empty the dishwasher right away.
A habit that I’m personally adding into my business routine, that every time I check my email I will spend a few minutes on Pinterest because I’m really trying to grow my blog and Pinterest is a great way to do this.
By the way, if you are not following me on Pinterest, you can check it out here, and don’t forget to hit the follow button before leaving.
To start this, write a list of everything you are already doing daily as a habit, they may not feel like a habit like brushing your teeth.
Then think of the things you automatically do during that day and the new habits you want to start doing to figure out how you can pair those current and new habits.
2. Brain Dumping
Brain dumping has been a game-changer for me and my productivity both in my personal and professional life.
What brain dumping is?
Brain Dumping is the act of taking a piece of paper or brain dumping printable and “dumping” all of the contents of your brain down as one may dump all of the contents of a purse onto a table. You are writing all of your thoughts, stressors, to-dos down on paper.
Some examples are:
- This person ticks me off!
- I need to add bananas to the grocery list
- I wish my boss didn’t do that
- That hurts my feeling
- I’m stressed about not being able to pay our bills.
When you write everything on paper, your brain will be free from storing and stressing about things, and it’ll be more creative.
"Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them."
Check out these brain-dumping printables I’ve created:
Another thing that’s not brain dumping, but it helps me a lot, and I’m sure it will help you.
Suppose I’m doing a task that needs my focus, like reading a book. I keep a pen and paper with me if something pops up in my head; so that way I’m not focusing on the task at hand and not “Don’t forget! Don’t forget!!’’
I write it down, forget it and focus on what I’m doing.
I also get very creative when I’m outside. When I go for a walk and listen to an audiobook or a podcast, all these fantastic ideas pop into my head. What I do is send emails to myself, maybe about a video idea or send an email to this person.
That’s the way I can focus more on the content in the audiobook.
Get rid of random things that are just popping into your head at the most inconvenient time and be more productive.
3. Set Timers
This tip is especially beneficial for the tasks you don’t want to do.
Let’s say you don’t want to work on a project, or you don’t want to clean the kitchen, or maybe you don’t want to do the dishes.
Set a timer. Trust me.
Here is an example of what I do almost on a daily basis: cleaning the kitchen.
I need to clean the kitchen, I need to get this done, but this will take you forever. The floor is dirty, the counters are covered in papers and crusty food. This is going to take FOREVER.
Set the timer for 10 minutes, and convince yourself that, “I’m going to clean the kitchen for 10 minutes, and when the time goes off, I can stop, whether it’s done or not. ”
You’ll be amazed at how much you can do in that 10 minutes or on a roll and repeat the alarm for another 10 minutes.
You’ll be saying to yourself, “Wow! It’s not perfect, it’s not totally done but it’s a lot more presentable. If someone walks in and wants to come over for a coffee, I will not be embarrassed, at least”.
I do this all the time with my business and around the house.
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Read More4. Do The Easy Task And Then “Eat That Frog”
I learned about this “Eating that Frog” thing at my day job when we went for training, and they had us read the book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brain Tracy
How does Eating The Frog make me more productive?
When you have to-do list of tasks and one of them you are DREADING; such as you, have to call an angry client back or have a meeting with someone and confront them about something or have something you don’t want to do.
Do that one first!
I personally love this method, but I twist it a bit. I do an EASY task first and then the difficult task.
This is because the challenging task is sometimes discouraging and I’m like, “Ohh! I’m not in the mood yet!” So I do the easy task first and then I’m good.
I feel accomplished that I’m checking tasks off the list, then it gives me confidence to do the challenging task that I’m dreading.
It’s the same thought process as we are told to make your bed every morning because it starts off your day with a completed task.
To recap: Do an easy task, then immediately do the task that you are dreading!
5. Do A Time Audit
For the next 1 or 2 days, write down every single task you are doing and how long each task takes you to complete. This takes some time and energy to get used to it, but it will be beneficial in the long run.
Here is an example of what some of my days look like:
- Morning wakeup (brush teeth, make coffee, unload the dishwasher, drink coffee): 35 minutes
- Read: 60 minutes
- Morning walk: 20 minutes
- Respond to emails: 36 minutes
- Edit YouTube video: 96 minutes
- Plan upcoming videos: 45 minutes
The time audit allows you to look back on what you did, how much time each task took.
Where are you spending your time? Where is the downtime? Where is your time going?
Are you spending time on the things that you don’t need to? Are you wasting time on TikTok?
Are you chilling when you should be working?
Then take a step further.
Are the tasks helping you reach your goals? The questions that I ask myself are: Are these tasks helping to grow my business? Is this creating more revenue? Are these tasks hurting my business or not doing anything to move me forward?
Doing a time audit is really going to be a wake-up call and help you decide what tasks can go, what tasks you should spend more time on, and what tasks should take less time.
Another thing to look at when doing a time audit is should you be spending less time on specific tasks?
As Parkinson’s Law states, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
If I’m gonna give a task 3 hours, it’s gonna take 3 hours and if I’m going to give it 2 hours, it will take me 2 hours.
A time audit will reveal what you are spending your time on and how you can become more productive.
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