Category: Personal Development

If you find often find yourself wishing you could get more done, you’re not alone. Whether you want to do more in the same amount of time, need more motivation for getting stuff done, or are looking to reduce the amount of time you waste in a day, these simple habits can help you improve your productivity.

Keep Your Desk Decluttered
While creativity can arise from chaos, a litter-strewn office probably isn’t helping your productivity. When you have visible files lying about your office, it reminds you of an unfinished task, while an unread book is an invitation to procrastination. Keeping your desk organized and free of clutter can help you stick with a task for more than one and a half times longer.

Schedule Time to Read Email
Instead of checking your email every time a new one arrives in your inbox, schedule a time at the end of the day to focus on this task. Monitoring and responding to emails right away is not only a great way to waste your precious time, but it has also been linked to lower memory function, depression, anxiety, and lower performance. Set up an auto-responder that lets people know that you check emails at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., and 3 p.m. and that you’ll respond during those times.

Rise Early
If you want to improve your productivity, then you need to get up early. When you get up early, you have the opportunity to establish a good morning routine that will help you improve your productivity. Rising early allows you to have the time in the morning to prepare for the day ahead without being late or rushing to get to work.

Focus on What’s Important
Take five minutes in the morning and read over your goals and remind yourself what you’re working toward. Not only will this help you to focus on what's important, but it will also give you a gauge to measure your to-do-list Doing this will allow you to look at your to-do-list with a renewed focus to make sure that you have at least one daily action that works toward your broader goals.

Increasing your productivity doesn't take a lot of extra work or more extended hours. By incorporating these habits into your daily routine, you can start to get more done in less time.

Technology has become a double-edged sword. While it allows us to connect, improve, perform, and leverage resources better than ever, it is often responsible for our decrease in productivity. The good news is that with the right apps and tools, you can use technology to your advantage and increase your productivity. Here are six, time management tools that can help to improve your productivity.

Rescue Time
One of the biggest reasons we lack productivity is because we aren't able to accurately keep track of the time our tasks take. If you have doubts that you’re using your time wisely, this app will provide you with a weekly report that shows you what things are stealing your time.

Remember the Milk
If you find that you struggle with managing everything your massive to-do-list, Remember the Milk is just the app for you. It's a free tool that is compatible with your computer, mobile device, Gmail, Outlook, and others. It helps you to manage all your tasks efficiently and reminds you of them no matter where you're at.

Focus Booster
Based on the Pomodoro Technique, this app is aimed at those who procrastinate and feel overwhelmed by their tasks. The app is designed to enhance your focus and helps to remove any anxiety you have with time pressures.

Toggl
With Toggl you can keep better track of the time you spend working on projects and tasks and is an excellent alternative to time-sheets. Effective time management starts with being clear on how much time you are spending on your projects and tasks, and then through careful analysis, working out how you can better manage them.

Evernote
Evernote is a free productivity tool that lets you capture your thoughts, ideas, and images in a variety of ways. It allows you to record your meetings, ideas, and speeches, interviews, create lists, add text and voice attachments, and share files with your friends. To optimize your time, you can also sync Remember The Milk with Evernote.

Mind42
Focus on your tasks at hand with mind mapping. Mind42 is a free mind mapping app that will help you become more organized by focusing your thoughts. When you can better focus your thoughts, you gain more clarity on what you need to get done.

If you find your productivity is lacking, consider adding these six useful time management tools to your daily routine. Stop letting technology kill your productivity, instead use it to your advantage.

The Pomodoro Technique is a philosophy of time management that is designed to provide you with maximum focus and creative freshness, which can allow you to complete projects quicker with less mental fatigue. The process is relatively simple. For every project or task that you need to complete during the day, you budget your time into short increments, of 25 minutes, and incorporate periodic 5-minute breaks. After you've finished four periods of work with 15 minutes of break time, then you take a 15-20 minute break before starting back to work.

How to Use the Pomodoro Technique
Start by choosing one task that you want to focus on. Get yourself ready by grabbing a pen and paper and a timer. Set the timer for 25 minutes and start to work on your task. Once the 25 minutes have passed, jot down your end time and mark your first period complete. Next, set the timer for 5-minutes to carefully time your break. Once your break is over, set the timer for another 25-minutes and start on your next tasks. Repeat this process four times and then enjoy a longer, 15 to 20-minute break.

Remove Distractions
If you want to be successful, you will need to remove all distractions before you get started. The purpose of the Pomodoro Technique is for you to focus on one task at a time without distractions that can kill your productivity.

Have Everything You Need
To get the most out of this process, you need to ensure that you’ve gathered everything you need to complete the task for the day and place them somewhere close by. This allows you to be more effective during the process, eliminating the need for you to spend time looking for items you need to complete the task.

Don’t Skip the Breaks
For you to remain focused and remain productive, you have to take the breaks. When the timer goes off, stop what you're working on and take your 5-minute break. This will help you to clear your mind a bit and get it ready to focus on the next task.

Record Your Thoughts
No matter how focused you are, you will always have random thoughts pop into your head. Rather than allowing these thoughts to derail your process, just jot down your thought on a piece of paper and get back to the task at hand. At the end of the day, you can look at the list of thoughts and make a plan to tackle tasks the next day.

To successfully utilize the Pomodoro Technique and boost your productivity, it is essential that you stay focused on your task for the entire 25-minutes. The only way the technique will work is if you remain productive for the whole of the 25 minutes.

Setting and meeting your deadlines is a huge part of whether or not you are productive or not. Setting deadlines and achieving them is an art that you can learn with some patience and practice. However, common mistakes can quickly derail your productivity and leave you struggling to meet your deadlines. Here are five common mistakes you want to try to avoid when setting deadlines.

Not Writing the Deadline Down
It's no big secret, that what we don't see, we often forget. It is vital if you want to meet your deadlines, to write them down on a calendar or somewhere you can see them on a daily basis. If you have a lot of deadlines to meet, it will work well for you to have a big calendar where you can write down the deadline on the day it is due. It is essential if you want this to work that you have to review your calendar daily.

Failing to Research the Options
If you have a deadline, you need to research all of your options before you finalize it. For example, if you have a big work presentation, make sure you do your research before you tell your boss when you can make the presentation. You might think that it will take you no more than a week, but after researching the topic, you may realize that it will take you more than two weeks to be thoroughly prepared.

Setting Unrealistic Deadlines
While you may have a ton of motivation, if you set deadlines that are unrealistic, you’ll do nothing but stress yourself out. When you have plenty of time to complete a task, there will be no need to rush. You will never be able to accomplish any tasks successfully if you are always rushing to finish it.

Having Too Many Deadlines
If you find yourself too stressed out, it may be because you have too many deadlines looming. You may have to take a look at each of your deadlines and either choose a different deadline or see if you can delegate the task. It is just not feasible, long-term, to be an overachiever because it is just too stressful. Learn to keep your goals balanced and create realistic deadlines for them.

Lacking the Steps to Reach Your Deadline
Divide your project into smaller chunks and mark a new deadline for each smaller task until the final project is completed. Dividing projects into smaller, bite-sized pieces is a much more feasible way to keep your momentum going.

Setting deadlines is an essential aspect of life. Without them, we tend to procrastinate. Take these tips into consideration so you can start to meet your deadlines and increase your productivity.