Are you tired of being tired and busy all the time ? In this blog post, I’m going to give you five easy productivity hacks that are going to help you to work LESS and have MORE time for the things that matter.
I’m sharing these productivity tips because the more productively and efficiently I can work, the more time I can spend doing things that I actually want to be doing.
Productivity Hack #1 – Never Miss Twice.
In James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, he talks about the importance of small changes, making big differences, but he also goes over the fact that life kind of gets in the way sometimes.
So the first productivity tip, if you are trying to make this a habit is “never miss twice”.
That means that if you slip up, if you have a day where it’s maybe not as good as the day before, or you don’t stick to your time blocking, the trick is to get back on track as quickly as possible.
Productivity Hack #2 – Time Block Your Schedule
Tip number two for being more productive is to time block your schedule.
Time-blocking is so effective because of something called the Zeigarnik Effect. Basically they found that if you have a list of tasks, your brain is more likely to hold onto the things that you haven’t done yet.
So if you use time blocking it allows your brain to let go of the things that are coming, because you know that each task has its own place in your schedule.
#3 – Brain Dump
Productivity hack number three is to brain dump. This is where you get a piece of paper and you write down every tiny little thing that you need to do, or that you can’t get off your mind.
Some people do this in the morning, some people do it before they go to bed so that they don’t have anything left in their mind and they can start fresh the next day.
The more that you can brain dump and get all the little things on paper, the more you realize how many things are going on in your head that are actually distracting you from the task at hand and therefore being less productive.
I like to write down everything and then cross out 1) everything that I can’t control and 2) all the things that aren’t due for another couple of weeks, which means I can push them back to my next to do list.
I’d love to know! Do you prefer physical Planners or digital planners? I kind of jump between the two of them, but I can’t resist pretty stationary. So let me not the comments below which team you’re on 👇
#4 – Delete Email App Off your Phone
Productivity hack #4 is to delete your email app off your phone so that you only check emails (and are disturbed by emails) when you’re actually at your laptop.
When you’re time-blocking, you need to have specific times of day where you check your emails and the rest of it, you are not available.
This kind of comes under the title of removing distractions. For me, I have my phone on do not disturb like 95% of the time. In the words of Glennon Doyle “your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself”.
For other apps (cause I know that technical detox is a huge thing and scrolling this time is a huge time suck) recently I’ve been stopping myself before opening the Instagram app and I ask myself, what would CEO Lucy do?
And you can ask yourself the same way before you open an app and say, “what would the productive version of me do in this situation?”
#5 Deep Focus Music
Hack number five is to use deep focus music.
When I have a lot of deep creative work that I need to get done, I use a combination of focus music and timing myself.
If I have a deadline or I have something that I want to get done before I go away for the weekend, for example, I will say, I need to write 500 words in 20 minutes, and set a timer. I’ll put my headphones on and I will get into that focused creative space.
Music is often considered a cognitive enhancer because it uses both sides of the brain, but for this particular, productivity hack you need to be using slow, calm music. So I can’t listen to anything by Lizzo or, you know, Nicki Minaj because I started choreographing and dancing in my head.
If you want some inspiration, I have a playlist of focus songs that you can have in your head phones to get work done. You can also read this article on how focus music improves creativity and productivity by Dan Silvestre.
Productivity and time management is just the beginning of work-life balance. You’re never going to find balance if you just productively do stuff that you still hate!
So if you want to organize your schedule better, if you want more time for yourself, and if you want to set boundaries unapologetically, you can click this link and book in a free discovery call with me to find out how we can work together or just email me directly lucy@lucybecker.com.
