Ultimate Productivity Guide: 15 Hacks to be more productive

The definition of productivity in a dictionary is a way to measure your efficiency. Being efficient means choosing your goals and channeling your time and energy to achieve it in the best way possible. It is about accomplishing your goals with limited time and effort and adopting an attitude for continuous improvement.

This is an ultimate guide on productivity hacks, In this comprehensive guide, we cover:

15 Hacks to Increase Productivity

At the end of your workday, how often do you feel that you could have done more? Maybe, written, studied more, or completed more tasks? This sense of dissatisfaction makes you feel incomplete or like you have wasted your day. However, with a few productivity hacks, you can complete your day feeling satisfied and fulfilled with what you have accomplished.

Productivity has become a top priority for everyone- be it a student or professional- and is getting more attention than ever. Though productivity is an ever-changing landscape, you can use these 15 productivity hacks to elevate your ability to get things done starting today.

#1 Organize & Declutter

Having an organized and clutter-free workspace can increase your ability to focus. Physical clutter negatively impacts your ability to concentrate and be productive. Hence, it is important to keep your workspace organized and well arranged with all relevant documents and stationery. Being organized will ensure that you find all the required materials and do not have to juggle between work. Moreover, having a decluttered workspace also helps in decluttering your mind and reducing the chance brain fog occurring.

#2 Turn off Notifications

Most of you are guilty of checking your phones frequently, even during work. This adversely affects your work productivity. Hence, it makes sense to turn off your mobile notifications, especially during work hours, to prevent any distractions and stay focused on the work. You should follow the same for your computer. It is advisable to turn off the notification enabled on your laptop and logout from your social media accounts so that you are not lured to the temptation.

#3 Avoid Multitasking

While it might seem efficient to do multiple tasks together, multitasking is actually bad for your productivity. It lowers your efficiency by 40% because you are unable to give complete attention to one particular task. You may not be able to check some boxes off your list and some may not have been completed very well. You tend to forget things and lose concentration, giving rise to mental fatigue and brain fog.

#4 Break down your Goals

There are times when your goals seem too far-fetched that you struggle even to start them. It is advisable to break your goals into smaller and attainable tasks. This will make it easy to follow and simple to complete. With a step-by-step plan of attainable actions, you will see a rise in your productivity.

#5 Batch Similar Tasks

One of the simplest productivity hacks is to group similar tasks together. You need to take account of all the tasks related to each other and finish it off together. For example, responding to all your emails, editing all your photos, writing down important tasks, etc. With this similar grouping of tasks, you will see a significant improvement in your productivity.

#6 Set a Timetable for your tasks

Setting up a timetable for your tasks is one of the best strategies to overcome procrastination. When you are assigned a task, add it to your timetable so that you do not miss it. When creating a timetable, ensure that you allocate time for all your work- be it working, exercising, or taking a break.

#7 Create Templates

Templates are an amazing way to save time. It is a ‘fill in the blank’ type document and is great for projects created the same way every time. For example, when you send email updates regularly or a weekly presentation, creating a template for that sounds very easy and time-saving. Think of all the work that you need to do on a regular basis, and make the necessary templates for all those work.

#8 Make Checklist

When used properly, checklists can be a great way to stay focused on your tasks and improve your productivity. It could be a list of to-do tasks, places to visit, priority list, and others. With a handy checklist, you get a fair sense of all the pending tasks and plan your day accordingly.

#9 Avoid Meetings as much as possible

Though useful, meetings can take up a lot of time. You can instead use this time on other things. It is better to exchange emails or a quick call than schedule meetings to get away with time-consuming activities. Under certain situations like sales, negotiations that a meeting becomes essential, you should keep one. But you should avoid meetings in other instances of information sharing and utilize your time effectively on other tasks.

#10 Use Productivity Tools effectively

Staying focused and productive can sometimes be challenging to achieve. Having the right tools at your disposal can play a crucial role in increasing your productivity. Not only will you be able to complete your tasks efficiently, but also streamline a process and save your time. With various productivity tools (read on to know about some useful productive tools), you will easily be able to streamline your work, create proper calendars for your tasks, collaborate with your team, and have a significant impact on your productivity.

#11 Manage your Energy

More than time, it is essential to manage your energy. This is a popular trick to optimize your day by concentrating your energy when you are most productive. If you are a morning person and have most of the energy during morning hours, put all your tedious tasks for that time.

#12 Delegate your Work

Delegation fuels productivity. If you are a team leader or business owner, you are answerable for all that your team or your company does, but you do not need to do all the work. You need to pass off the project to other members of the team and lighten your load. When you delegate the tasks from your table, you are able to focus better on your work and accomplish your tasks.

#13 Listen to Music

Music is a great way to maintain focus and keep up your productivity. When you play music without lyrics, it helps you improve your focus over a long period. With lyrics, you usually tend to sing the song and divert your mind. However, with a wordless song, you improve your chances of productivity and stay focused for long.

#14 Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is a crucial aspect of everyone’s life. You should try to get at least seven hours of sleep to ensure your physical and mental well-being. It gives your mind a good time to relax and rejuvenate itself, prepare itself for the next day, reduce stress, and improve your memory. A good sleep also relaxes your eyes and prevents any eye strain headache. It also sharpens your focus and concentration, thereby improving your productivity.

#15 Plan your day ahead

Before calling it a day, it is essential to prepare yourself for the next day. You should, ideally, plan your work a day in advance to save time. It is important to write down your tasks and create a proper schedule for all your work.

Productivity hacks are a great way to get work done faster and smarter. They help utilize your time efficiently and develop productive work habits for the future. With these simple hacks listed above, you will understand the importance of maximizing your efficiency smartly.

7 Productivity Tips from famous CEOs

 

We all have the same number of hours in a day, but our work demands more from some of us. This is especially true for CEOs. Leading a company has its own set of challenges, and CEOs have to manage time, resources, and other demands while finding their headspace to deliver their work on time. They have developed some master tricks to maximize their productivity.

Whether you are a business owner or simply want to be more productive at work, follow these successful tips by CEOs to squeeze more productivity for yourself:

#1: Get in an interruption-free zone

Nothing is more frustrating than getting into your zone of working and then being disturbed by someone- your colleague or co-worker who drops by your desk. It takes a lot of time to get back on track after any interruption. Andrew Marsh, CEO of Fifth Column Games, has developed a system in his office to ensure that employees work without any disturbance. By placing a ‘cone of silence,’ employees can let others know that they do not want to be disturbed. This can also improve your productivity when working from home and stay away from all sorts of distractions.

#2: Keep one day free from meetings

Dustin Moskovitz, CEO of Asana, keeps at least one day a week free from meetings. He has implemented a company-wide ‘No meeting Wednesday’ rule to ensure that everyone gets time for their own work without being pulled into any meeting. With this policy in place, all the employees seem to see an improvement in their productivity.

#3: Use downtime to think

As CEOs, it is crucial to spend some time for yourself and jot down all your thoughts. With so many meetings and other works, it gets difficult to spend some time on your ideas. Sara Blakely, CEO of Spanx, follows a morning ritual to drive aimlessly and spend time channelizing her thoughts. She keeps her notebook handy and jots down everything that comes to her mind.

#4: Make quick decisions

CEOs need to make multiple important decisions in a day, most of which are directly proportional to the business’ growth, and they cannot afford to go wrong in that. Med Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, has an excellent solution for this. He takes in all the data possible and then analyses his work. With all the data in place, it is easier to get down to a decision.

#5: Skip the hierarchy

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, following the chain of command can sometimes become cumbersome and slow down the process of work. He follows the process of communication via the shortest path possible. The way to solve a problem is to allow the free flow of information at all levels. This passes on the information smoothly and increases work productivity.

#6: Create better lists

It is essential to make a list of all the works involved and create a planner of all the tasks. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, starts his morning by creating an exhaustive to-do-list. He groups all the similar tasks together and then decides on the priority tasks. Most often, if you do the major tasks, all the subtasks automatically get completed. This way, you can increase your productivity and finish all your tasks easily. Moreover, creating lists also help you organize your work and improve your reaction time for the work.

#7: Block out distractions

As an essential practice, all CEOs need to ruthlessly block out minor distractions so that they can focus on all critical tasks and decisions. According to Walter Isaacson (best-selling author of Steve Jobs biography), Steve Jobs was very strict about filtering his distractions. His employees would come to him for even the silliest of queries, but he would only reply to the important ones. It is also essential to block out other distractions like personal or social, to give your hundred percent to your work. Many CEOs turn off their mobile notifications for social media and other channels to avoid distraction.

Though there is no special secret of creating more hours in a day, the secret is to perform and improve your productivity to make the most out of the time available. Follow the tips provided by the top CEOs of the world and implement the same in your work to improve your productivity.

Top 4 Productivity Apps to Get Work Done Faster

 

Life becomes easy when you have a plethora of tools to help you focus on work. Whether you are working solo or as part of a team, you need the right tools to improve your focus and work productivity. These tools come in different forms and take care of various aspects of your work. In this article, we have listed some of the best tools and apps to increase your productivity.

1. Slack: Slack is a messaging platform designed to work in teams and is an ideal communication tool for people working remotely. With multiple features like instant messaging, status check, member tagging, threads, and chats, Slack is a great tool to manage workflow and keep everyone informed of their tasks. Moreover, with free file sharing and screen sharing options, it helps in a seamless collaboration among members and improves your productivity manifold.

2. Evernote: We cannot stress more on the importance of noting down your work and tasks. In an ideal world, we would like to sit down and finish all the tasks without forgetting anything. However, in reality, it does not work. As humans, you tend to forget things. Hence, it is important to keep a note of all the tasks at hand and complete them one by one. Evernote is a notebook app for everything. You can write your ideas, format them with rich text, create a quick checklist, and connect it with your camera and document files. This is a great productivity hack for professionals and even for students currently looking for online classes productivity hacks.

3. Pixlr: Though Photoshop is still the king at photo editing, but it’s often overkill. Pixlr is a great app to edit photos in easy steps. Need to crop or brighten an image, remove a small dot, increase the resolution, add a text, etc., Pixlr is your best resort. It is an easy to use tool with various adjustment tools like crop, resize, edit, sharpen, rotate, blur, and others. By learning this tool, you do not have to wait for your graphic designer to get these simple things done and improve your productivity manifold. 

4. Google Drive: Google is not a new tool for us. Be it for emails, saving files, or other works; Google has a tool for all. As a professional, you tend to face a lot of issues when storing your folders. Google Drive is a popular way of storing files and an important cloud storage platform for employees. With advanced features, Google drive offers better collaboration with people and saves a lot of time to avoid relying on others. This helps in saving time and improving your productivity.

All these productivity apps help you save your time and make it easier to do your job. With these tools, you ensure that you do not lose out on time by relying on others or forget your essential tasks. Hence, these productive tools keep you organized, focused, and productive.

 

Takeaways

Productivity plays an important role in your daily life. It helps you complete your assigned tasks and gain the sense of accomplishment. It is important to follow these ground rules on improving work productivity. However, you can improve your productivity with regular practice and certain habitual changes. You should know how to start small and stay consistent because nothing changes overnight.