You’ll never find a better mantra for maximizing productivity than Rudyard Kipling in his poem “If –” as he urges us to “fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.” Productivity isn’t about doing more than you can but simply making every second of every day count. In short, it’s about living your fullest and most fulfilling style of life – workwise, pleasure-wise, and otherwise.
These life hacks can help you not just maximize productivity, but get more done in less time.
Make a Daily Schedule, Times and All
One of the biggest productivity hacks is also one of the simplest – make a schedule and stick to it. Your schedule should feature the tasks you wish to accomplish for the day or week along with the amount of time you wish to allot for each task. That second part is often overlooked, but it’s surprisingly effective. Knowing how much time you expect to spend on something, or all of your tasks in a day can help you better budget your time.
Be Consistent
Of course, simply writing out your plans on paper won’t mean anything if you don’t follow through. What’s more, if you break that schedule repeatedly, it will eventually become meaningless. Follow through with your schedule, and be consistent. Part of maximizing productivity this way is about being disciplined enough to keep your eyes on the prize, and that means sticking to your schedule.
Remain Focused
While working on the task for a given time slot, remain as completely focused on that as possible. There are times when you’ll slip up – for example, if you get a very important call or have a family situation you can’t avoid. However, schedules are about long-term results. Committing to remain focused all the time and doing so most of the time will produce good results a lot of the time – and that’s bound to be a great improvement.
Work on What’s Important When Fresh
As pitchers get deeper into games, they often start to tire and their pitches become less effective. The same holds true with our ability to focus on difficult tasks. If you have a particularly challenging task or two that needs to be done, trying to focus on it when you’re wiped out will just lead to slow work and frustration. Instead, try scheduling it earlier in your day, or whenever you feel most rested.
Following each of these easy steps can help boost your personal productivity long-term and help you get tasks faster despite time crunches.