4. Set up and use a planning system

This is so essential, because if you don't plan where you want to go, you'll get nowhere. No one wants that, right?

Whether you're a paper-planner lover (like me) or a strictly-digital planner baby, find a system that works for you.

After trying lots of different things, I found my perfect system in the mix of paper and digital. I schedule all appointments in Google Calendar, and I also use it as my digital (and universally accessible) content calendar.

This way even if I don't have my paper planner with me, I can still access my appointments and content calendar.

I also use a bright yellow Leuchtturm1917 notebook (yeah, the "Bullet Journal" notebook) as my planner and brain-dump-central. It makes me happy, and it's important for me to put pen to paper when I'm brainstorming post and product ideas.

I find it easier to work through mental and writer's blocks on paper, and I also find it handy to make my own calendar in the notebook, and use it to plan out my content calendar, my quarterly/monthly/weekly goals, and keep track of my daily tasks.

I also use and recommend Asana to keep track of processes in your business and logging your projects and tasks.

Find a system that works for you and use it for a reasonable amount of time (at least a two to four weeks), and only switch if it's really not working for you.

Sometimes you might have multiple ways of doing the same thing, like my content calendar on paper and in Google Calendar, and that's fine.

It doesn't matter what the system is as long as there is one, and it works for you, and you're scheduling tasks and keeping track of your goals, because that's absolutely essential to having clarity and getting things done.

5. Make task lists your friend

If you're struggling to stay afloat with your blog or business and keep track of all the work that needs to be done, you better make task lists your friend.

Ideally, your planning system should help you find a schedule that prioritizes the most important work.

One way to implement that is to make daily task lists (or to-do lists) a part of your daily routine.

At the end of each work day, I make a list of all the tasks I want to tackle the next day, based on what didn't get done that day and what is important to move me towards my goals.

To-do lists often get a bad rap for being too long and too overwhelming and that's why I have a rule of not including any more than 3 main tasks for one day.

No matter how efficient you are, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to focus enough to tackle more than 3 large projects on a day.

If you really want to learn how to be productive, make planning specific tasks ahead of time a priority so you're not left with a mile long list of small, seemingly "busy" chores and endless stress (yikes!).

The daily task lists help you to break your monthly goals down into bite-sized, actionable tasks that you can work on day-by-day and week-by-week and moves you towards your goals by default.

It beats ending up in December and realising you didn't "have the time" to work on most of your large goals, doesn't it?

A daily task list also helps you gain clarity and peace of mind, so that you're never sat at your desk thinking, "what should I do now?!"

You've got a clear plan for the (next) day and you can be focused from the get go next morning!

6. Use time blocks to supercharge your focus

Time-blocking has been one of my favourite productivity discoveries of the last few years.

At University, we had to do new weekly in-depth research projects (with a 3500 word paper that also needed to be submitted!).

The only way I ever got that done was by being laser-focused and using time wisely to get most bang for my time buck.

I found my groove in devoting 70% of my work time to focus on the research work, and 30% of the remaining time to summarize what I'd worked on earlier.

This way when the end of the week rolled around, I already had the bulk of my work written up, and I could focus 70% of time I had on the last day to put it all together (that included many, many 23:59 submissions for the 00:00 deadline).

It was intense, so intense, but if I hadn't found and stuck to this system, it would have been dire.

Breaking down my days into blocks of work time gets me focused, in the zone, and helps me to knock out a lot of important tasks every day.

Currently, a typical workday might look something like this:

06:30 - 08:00 | "Me" time, which includes meditation, working out, a shower, breakfast with my favourite man (and journalling on days I'm feeling it)

08:00 - 10:00 | Work block 1

10:00 - 10:30 | Break (because I can)

10:30 - 12:00 | Work block 2

12:00 - 12:30 | Lunch

12:30 - 14:30 | Work block 3

14:30 - 15:00 | Break (because it's good for you)

15:00 - 17:00 | Work block 4

17:00 - 17:15 | Review to wrap up + making the task list for the next day

It might seem like I have way too many breaks, but this schedule gets me really focused during the work blocks (designed for the optimal time our brains can focus at a stretch on intense work).

My work blocks are dedicated to only one task at a time, and this slowly, but surely, adds up over the week to getting so much work done (that I otherwise might have procrastinated on).

If you've been sucked into the biggest "corporate" lie of abhorring breaks, this schedule might shock you.

Breaks, however, are the very reason I can focus deeply in my work blocks. I use that time to either read a book, take a walk, watch a quick episode of whatever I'm watching, or move to a cafe to get myself (and my work) out of the house.

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