Achieving a more productive life doesn’t happen by accident. From trying new methods of tackling your workday to changing up your diet people who become productive put in work. As with any change in lifestyle a set of rules should be set in place to maximize results. Think of these rules as the stepping stone sto doubling, tripling, or simply improving your productivity.
80/20 Rule
If you’ve taken any basic econ or business class you’ve probably heard of this – 80% of your content, revenue, engagement, etc. comes from 20% of your customers, product, etc. Applying this to productivity works, too. 20% of your time should produce 80% of your results. It’s pertinent to weed out processes that slow you down, holding you from accomplishing the ultimate goal of the task. It takes time to reach 80/20 balance but step number one is always the same: go through each of your routine tasks and determine what you can cut out
Focus on will, not won’t
Motivation grows hand-in-hand with mindset. You can become motivated to tackle any task simply by changing how you view it. That’s why productive people focus on what they will accomplish versus what they won’t. Instead of thinking I won’t check email for the next hour, try changing your mindset to in the next hour I will finish Q3 sales projections. Research shows that thought suppression leads to even more focus on the thing you want to stop doing.
Throwing out traditional to-do lists
To-do lists often lack any kind of meaningful organization. They are simply a numeric list of stuff you should probably focus on that day or week. When you’re highly productive you take it a step further and organize your tasks based on impact. Accomplish the items that will have the most impact first, leaving less impactful tasks for later. When you get more impactful things done you feel like you accomplished more leading to sustained productivity.
Productivity comes in all styles – what rules do you follow to add a little bit of productiveness to your day?