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When people talk about boosting productivity, they usually give you a handful of quick productivity hacks that are supposed to rock your world.

These things can help..sometimes – but it’s usually like throwing a bandaid on a cut that needs stitches. You’re attempting to stop the bleeding without addressing what’s causing the bleeding in the first place.

You aren’t dealing with the root of your problems. The root of your productivity problems. It’s not that you don’t have enough time, or that you just aren’t trying hard enough – it’s your day to day habits that are holding you back.

The thing is – learning about fixing our habits is not very sexy. We prefer clever, fast, and easy solutions to complicated problems, and this is rarely the right answer.

I’m going to give you a few smart productivity hacks today – as long as you understand that your longterm habits need to change if you really want things in your life to feel less overwhelming.

What I’m saying is, use bandaids where it makes sense, and get stitches where it makes sense. Make sense?

Anyway, I do think these smart productivity hacks will help you be more efficient in all (or at least MOST) areas in your life. Let’s get on with it. 😉

How can I be consistently productive?



Being consistently productive is about changing the way you live your life. We’re all given the same amount of time in a day, yet I’m sure you know someone who seems like they can do it all.

Well they definitely don’t.

Most importantly, these people have learned when it’s the right time to say yes, and when they should say no. Having a deep understanding of how and where you spend your time is the first step to being more productive (which is in the eye of the beholder, really).

Related: The Complete Guide to Time Blocking

After that, it’s all about figuring out good habits and sticking to them. Overcoming procrastination, getting up early, being consistent, and being kind to yourself are all steps to get you there.

It’s really beyond the scope of this article to tackle how to be consistently productive, but it’s worth mentioning that there is no special hack that’s going to get you there. Be consistent and understand it’s a neverending journey, so find ways to enjoy it.

Smart Productivity Hacks That Actually Work

Put Music On

Studies have shown that people who listen to music when they work, work faster and get more done. Now, this is dependent on a few factors, such as the type of music, environment you’re in, and the person in general.

If you’re using music as one of your productivity hacks, you need to make sure that a couple of things are true. The following are some of the qualifications of the music you should choose.

Choose a song without lyrics.

If you’re working on an extremely complex job, music may distract you rather than help. Use music with those more simple and mundane everyday tasks instead.

Make sure the song does not have a complicated structure.

If you’re a person that isn’t used to listening to music while you work, this productivity hack may not work for you. Try it out, and see if you feel like it makes you more distracted.

Keep your music at a moderate sound level. If it’s too loud it can become too distracting.

Use music you’re familiar with.

Don’t try and use music to help you LEARN. This can make the learning process take longer.

If you aren’t sure where to start with, consider doing a YouTube search for productivity music. This is personally one of my favorite channels, and he comes out with a new track every month.

As far as genres, you’re best off going with something like classical (but not too complicated of a beat), electronic, or video game music. As long as you find something ambient, repetitive, and without lyrics, you should be good to go!

Make a List

Having a daily list of tasks to complete ranked in order from high priority to low priority helps improve your productivity levels tremendously. Typically I recommend only picking a handful of tasks – because the reality is we tend to overbook ourselves and we’re going to feel and BE a lot more accomplished if we’re realistic with ourselves.

Related: How to Get It All Done Every Day

Now, here’s the trick that’ll help maximize your productivity when making a list. Make sure that you’re doing the most complicated tasks when your energy is the HIGHEST.

This is a different time of day for all of us – but we all have a specific time that our brains work better. This is why I hate those articles telling you that you have to get up early to be productive.

What if you aren’t a morning person?

For me, my highest energy point is late at night. This is when I do my best and brightest work.

If you aren’t sure what time of day YOU have the most energy, track it. I spent two weeks tracking my mood. I either marked down that I was high, medium, or low energy.

After two weeks, I saw a pattern of being the most high energy around nine PM, so THIS is when I do my most difficult tasks.

Figure out when your high energy time is, and use this for the harder tasks, and complete the repetitive mundane tasks when you’re low energy.

This changed everything for me. I had always spent my days trying to finish the most complicated stuff at six in the morning, and it ended up taking me longer to finish it. Switching to planning your day SMARTER is one of the most useful productivity hacks I know.

Schedule Break Times

I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of not scheduling enough breaks during the day (even though I’m sure we all know the importance of it). When you work too much for too many hours a day, eventually your brain will just stop cooperating.

The importance of breaks has been shown in MANY studies (like this one) throughout the last thirty years, so we know it’s definitely a thing.

Scheduled break times (and these should be short frequent breaks) will ultimately allow you to work more efficiently when you sit down to get that task list completed. If you’re taking a break every hour (as you should), you can work for fifty minutes, then take a nine minute break.

Related: How to Overcome Procrastination

Alternatively, you can also try something like the Pomodoro Technique, which is where you work for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break. After four Pomodoro’s (four sessions of doing this), you take a longer 15-20 minute break. The idea behind the Pomodoro technique is since you only have 25 minutes, it instills a sense of urgency in what you’re doing.

Different things work better for different people, so experiment with it and see what works best for you.

Oh – and here’s another little tip. Each time you’re able to take a break try to do something that will help regain focus, energy and productivity levels. A healthy snack, a good book, or a short walk.

Focus on One Task

Lemme just say that multitasking is not a thing. It’s not actually possible, and the people who think they’re the best at it are actually the worst. Your brain cannot equally focus on two things at once, so you’re basically just switching back and forth between tasks very quickly – not doing two tasks at once.

The thing is, it often takes us a little time to get into the groove of whatever we’re doing. When you switch between tasks, you’re making your brain work harder to get back into the zone it needs to be in to get things done.

Avoid Interruptions

This one goes hand in hand with a lot of the productivity hacks we’ve talked about, but it’s important enough to talk about on its own.

I work from home, which means I face interruptions in the form of a toddler pretty often.

It always used to frustrate me when this happened because it felt like it took SO long to get back to working productively.

According to a recent study, every time you face an interruption, it usually takes just under 25 minutes for you to get back into a productive zone. This is because our brain has to try and remember where it left off, and it has to get back into the zone it was in previously.

This is different than taking a break. A break is intentional and we usually know where we left off, and where we’ll pick back up when we’re done. Distractions can be anything from a phone call, to someone walking into your office, or even getting distracted on Facebook for a while.

Now, if the distraction is related to the task you’re working on, it’s not going to hinder your ability to get back on task. But the longer and less related the distraction, the longer it’s going to take you to get back to being productive.

Time Batching

Time (or task) batching is one of my favorite productivity hacks, and it’s something that I use every day. You can learn more about time batching here if you’re interested, but I’ll give you a brief rundown of what it is.

Basically, you want to take your LIKE tasks and complete them at the same time. If you need to spend time answering emails and writing a weekly newsletter, these two things can be done at once. If you need to go to the grocery store and the post office, run these errands at the same time.

Basically, you’re saving yourself time by completing these two (or however many) like tasks because you’re reducing the start up and slow down time. You only have to boot your computer once. You only have to drive into town once.

I like to try and batch my tasks at the beginning of the day. I’ll look at what needs to be completed, and see what I can group together and do at the same time.

Get Sleep

The average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night for their brain to function at the highest level possible. Look, I know that this isn’t realistic for everyone.

Truthfully, I don’t get 7-9 hours most nights, and that’s just the way it is. When I do though, I DO notice a difference in my energy levels. I have been working on getting to bed earlier, and I probably am successful with it around half of the week.

The thing is, everything you do in life is a trade. If you choose to trade sleep with watching a movie, that’s your choice. We ALL have to decide what’s going to be best for us, but I believe that most of us prioritize other things over sleep.

I think it is beneficial to try something different. If you’re struggling with feeling like you have the energy to complete your tasks every day, give yourself an extra hour of sleep and see if it makes a difference. I really think it will.

Take a Walk

Being in nature has been proven to reduce stress levels. I did a month-long experiment where I went for a walk in nature every day (you can read about my nature experiment here).

I noticed it did seem to improve my overall mood. There was some added stress because of the trade, as I had less time for other things. It was well worth it though.

Taking a walk can be done in your little five minute breaks too!

Unsubscribe From Email

Many people are looking for email productivity hacks because email is one of those things that we ALL struggle with. I don’t know about you, but I’m subscribed to WAYY more mailing lists than I have time for.

And as humans, we struggle with letting things go. We know that there are plenty of emails in our box that do provide us with value, so it’s difficult to NOT want to hang on to them.

But you have to be realistic with yourself. You don’t have time for #allthethings, so go ahead and click unsubscribe. You can resubscribe later.

Check Email Twice a Day

I only check email once a day and it’s good for me. I listened to a podcast recently, where they talked about how when we check emails multiple times a day (the average is about 15 times a day) and respond just as often, we’re allowing other people to dictate our time.

We’re putting out fires on other people’s schedule, instead of getting to dictate how we want to spend our time. This leads back to the task batching idea. If we’re taking the time to OPEN emails in our inbox multiple times a day and then responding, we’re not utilizing our time wisely.

It’s almost worse when you read an email without answering it right away. You’re going to use up twice the time because you’re going to have to open your inbox twie and read the card.

Decide on a time of day you’re going to check your email, and only do it then. I wrote another post detailing what happened when I got rid of social meda/gmail on my phone, and the results were pretty astounding.

I saved a lot of time, and I know you can too. Resist the urge to check it fifty times a day.

Categorize Email

Adding labels or categories into your email account. These will be folders that you use to maximize productivity levels. Some labels you could use are “to do”, “bills”, “accounting” (for those who are self-employed), “family”, “school info”, and “work completed”.

Having specific categories or labels to place your emails in will help you review them during your regularly scheduled email correspondence time that most people recommend scheduling when seeking the best time management hacks.

Delegate Small Tasks

To properly delegate, you might have to tackle TWO false beliefs that many of us have.

That getting help makes us weak and/or lazy That no one can do a job as well as we can

Neither of these things is true. Nobody can do #allthethings, and delegating just means you’ve learned what is actually worth spending your time on, and what is not.

I know it’s hard to delegate tasks to other people. Because when you first teach someone to do something, it’s likely that they won’t do as good of a job as you would.

But the reality is – they can (and will) get as good as you if you give it time (of course this somewhat depends on the task, your next door neighbor will not mom your kids as well as you).

So make sure and delegate the things that don’t require you – because some things will. But definitely not everything.

A recent example that I’ve been dealing with is my messy house. I’ve finally reached the point that I can admit it’s going to stay a big mess unless I change something. I can’t spend the time cleaning it more often because I things in my life that are more important to spend my time on.

So I’m gonna hire someone. It isn’t actually going to cost a lot (under $100 a month), and it’s going to take a HUGE stress point away from me. I’m not lazy. I just understand that cleaning my house is not a valuable use of my time, and it’s not something I have to do.

Just Say No

Saying “yes” to something is saying no to everything else.

I think many of us struggle with this. For me, saying no feels like I’m missing out on something. More importantly, it feels like I’m rejecting someone else. I hate saying no.

I’ve found most of us struggle with productivity because we’re always helping other people. While I totally get wanting to help others, in the long run, you’re not helping anyone.

Related: Why The Typical Idea of Self Care is Bullshit

If you aren’t getting to your own responsibilities, you’re not going to be able to continue helping anyone else out – and your mental health is going to suffer (which will also impact all of those people you’re trying to help).

If saying no is something you really struggle with, start with shutting off notifications on your cell phone and social media during work hours so that you don’t actually have to “say no” to anyone. Simply reply to them during your scheduled break or email correspondence time.

Another trick that helps me with saying no is looking critically at everything I’ll be saying no to by saying “yes” to something else. This helps me realize whether it’s really worth it or not (and often it’s not).

What are the best apps for productivity?

Now that you have a list of smart productivity hacks to boost your efficiency, it’s time to share some of the best apps for productivity.

Best Apps for Productivity

Trello

ClickUp (My FAVORITE)

Asana

Hootsuite

Slack

Cozi (Family Calendar)

Google Drive

Evernote

HelloSign (to electronically sign documents)

Going into the specifics of these apps is beyond the scope of this article, but I’ll do a breakdown of the different apps soon.

Wrapping Up Smart Productivity Hacks

Lacking productivity skills doesn’t mean you’re lazy. We all struggle from time to time trying to find the best way to maximize the hours in our day. If you truly want to start being more consistently productive, then start making changes to your daily habits with the tips I shared today.

Feel free to tweak each of the smart productivity hacks I’ve shared today into something that helps you maximize productivity and start getting things done in a timely fashion. Remember that it takes time to change habits like this – so be kind to yourself and don’t give up.

Related: How to Work From Home With a Toddler

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