The Best Strategies to Increase Your Productivity

Everybody would like to be able to accomplish more throughout their day, but increasing your productivity can often seem impossible. The following strategies, if followed, can double, and even triple your productivity. Here are the best strategies to develop if you want to increase your productivity substantially.

 

Set Goals and Productivity Targets

 

When you set goals, you end up focusing your energy on the things that you want to achieve. These are things that you wouldn't be able to accomplish by default. This will automatically make you more productive. It is essential that you are clear on exactly what you want to achieve.

 

Maintain Your Work Environment

 

Your work environment is what sets the stage for your workflow, and ultimately your productivity. If you are self-employed, this means finding a place that allows you to focus without distractions. If you are employed, this involves modifying your desk to make it conducive to productivity.

 

Put Important Things First

 

Since there are only 24 hours in a day, it is essential that you put your most important tasks first. If you want to be more productive and reach your goals, then you have to work on the critical tasks first and deprioritize anything that doesn't get you closer to your goals.

 

Use the 80/20 Rule

 

The 80/20 rule refers to the phenomenon where 80 percent of your output is brought about by 20 percent of your efforts. This means that the remaining 20 percent of the production can only be achieved with 80 percent effort. This means that you have to let go of the little details that no one but you notices. The key is to focus your time and energy on producing the 80 percent of everything you do. 

 

Have a Separate List for Incoming Tasks

 

Throughout your day, you will probably receive a stream of random and miscellaneous tasks. Rather than immediately giving them attention add them to a separate list so you can focus on your daily goals. At the end of the day, allocate a block of time to clear the list out. 

 

Know your Motivation Triggers

 

When you become aware of your motivational triggers, you can better connect with them and dramatically increase your productivity. Figure out what inspires you and determine how you can integrate these triggers into your daily life to help you reinforce your motivation. 

 

If you find that you lack productivity, consider incorporating these strategies into your daily life can help you to increase your productivity dramatically.

Top 5 Productivity Hacks for Procrastinators

No one is immune to falling victim to procrastination. Everyone puts things off from time to time, so there is always room to increase our productivity once we know how to deal with our tendencies to procrastinate properly. To help you combat procrastination and become more productive, here are the top five productivity hacks for procrastinators.

 

Name It

 

The first thing that you need to do is notice that you are procrastinating and acknowledge it. It is essential that you do this without judging yourself and without getting overly stressed that you don't have enough time. The next time you notice you're procrastinating, just say to yourself "procrastinating," or "moving on." This allows you to acknowledge your procrastination so you can move on.

 

Figure Out Where Your Time Goes

 

When we're procrastinating, we all use different props to fill our time. To improve your productivity, you'll need to identify what these are for you. Digital distractions are extremely powerful procrastination temptations that we need to try to resist consciously. To figure out where your time goes, start to write down exactly where your time goes.

 

Make Time Your Best Friend

 

Most procrastinators frequently fool themselves when it comes to the passage of time. You might often get to the end of the day and not understand where the day went. If this is something that happens to you, then you need to shift your relationship with time. You’ll need to become aware of how long each task takes you, rather than making a guess. 

 

Improve Your Time Estimates

 

Often, as a procrastinator, you may tend to estimate how long a task will take without factoring in any time for your procrastination. This causes you to take much longer than expected to finish a task. If you know that you tend to procrastinate, factor this into your estimation, so you're not always falling behind.

 

Meet More Deadlines

 

Often, the only time we manage to get around to focusing properly on your tasks is when you have a looming deadline. So, if you want to improve your focus and increase your productivity, you might want to start giving yourself more deadlines. The best way to do this is to get in the habit of promising to deliver certain things by a specific time/date.

 

Even self-professed procrastinators can improve their productivity. With these five productivity hacks, you can start to decrease the amount of time you spend procrastinating and get more done.

Top Tips for Minimizing Distractions to Get More Done

Increasing your productivity doesn’t take a magic wand or require you to get an advanced degree in statistics. If you are struggling with a lack of productivity, you need to take a closer look at your daily habits. Being unproductive is nobody’s fault but your own. Here are some of the top tips that you can incorporate into your daily life to minimize distractions and get more done. 

 

Tip #1 – Learn to Anticipate Yourself

 

When it comes to productivity, you’re your own worst enemy. According to a study by the University of California Irvine, office workers are only able to focus on a task for an average of three minutes and five seconds before they become distracted. Surprisingly, 44 percent of those distractions are internal. The good news is that internal disturbances are the only kind that you can control. Learn to know your patterns and plan for these distractions.

 

Tip #2 – Send Out Busy Signals

 

More than half of your distractions are external distractions that come in the form of email, people, phone calls, and chatter from other offices. If you want to stop these external distractions before they start you have to give out the right signals. If you utilize instant messenger, set yourself too busy and wear headphones, even if you aren't listening to music. Providing subtle queues may seem passive aggressive, but they will also save you from annoying distractions.

 

Tip #3 – Make Technology Work for You

 

At times, technology may seem like an enemy, but technology can be your anti-distraction buddy. Turn off your email alerts, create an auto-response to text messages, and set your phone to go to voicemail. Block out chunks of time on your calendar as "busy." Unless you are dealing with life and death situations at work, your coworkers will be able to manage without you for a few hours.

 

Tip #4 – Learn to Say No

 

If you are already overloaded with work and you feel like you never get anything accomplished, then you need to learn to say no to new requests and projects. You can nicely let people know that you would love to help, but your plate is currently full. 

 

If you are starting to have more and more unproductive days, it’s time for you to determine your distractions and put a stop to them. By being proactive, silencing technology, and learning to say no, you will find that you will start to become more productive. 

Why Being a Perfectionist Will Kill Your Productivity

If you tend to set high bars for yourself and always try to put your best foot forward to achieve your goals, your perfectionism could be killing your productivity. While striving for perfection can help you achieve great results, it can also prevent you from being your best and can foster a lack of productivity. Here are several ways the being a perfectionist will quickly kill your productivity.

 

Perfectionism Makes You Less Efficient

 

When you strive for perfection in the tasks that you do, even when you've completed the task, you will linger on to find new ways that you can improve. This lingering process might start off as a quick ten-minute process but can quickly escalate until you find yourself spending an hour or more looking for things to improve. This causes you to spend way too much time on a task that required and puts you behind schedule.

 

You Become Less Effective

 

As a perfectionist, you probably do little things because they seem like a good addition. However, you fail to consciously think whether those additions are necessary. Sometimes, those additions not only fail to add value but might even ruin things.

 

You Tend to Procrastinate

 

When you have perfectionist tendencies, you often wait for the perfect moment, which tends to overcomplicate a project. What is a simple task, might get blown out of proportion, to the extent that it then becomes intimidating subconsciously. This causes you to procrastinate on working on it because you are waiting for the ever "perfect" moment before you begin. Unfortunately, this perfect moment never happens until it's too late.

 

You Miss the Bigger Picture

 

Since you are too hung up on the little details, you tend to forget about the bigger picture and the end goal. It isn't uncommon to see better jobs in pruning the trees than the growth of the forest.

 

You Fuss Over Unfounded Problems

 

Most perfectionists tend to anticipate problems before then crop up and develop solutions to address the issues. It ends up becoming an obsession to pre-empt potential problems. Unfortunately, most of the problems that you envision never surface or they don’t really matter as much as you thought they would. 

 

While striving to aim for higher standards isn’t a bad thing, when the quest for perfection turns into an obsession, it will quickly kill your productivity. The answer isn’t to stop striving for perfection, but rather to be conscious of your perfectionist tendencies and manage them accordingly. 

3 Key Things to Understand About the Law of Attraction

The law of attraction was first popularized in the 2006 movie “The Secret” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. It has had a huge impact on the mass consciousness, but there is still a large amount of confusion on its general application.

 

#1 - It’s About Vibration, Not Thoughts

 

The main idea behind the law of attraction is that people manifest their reality not through their thoughts but through their vibration. The universe will respond to the energy generated by a particular thought as opposed to the thought itself. So you need to first get yourself into a good mood somehow before you will be able to manifest the energy of what you really want. After a while, the vibration becomes the reward, and the material items just appear after the fact. 

 

#2 - Letting Go of Resistance

 

The level of internal resistance people have to the things that they want is not understood. People can have certain problems or issues, and then they create an identity of themselves out of these problems. When something comes along that is at odds with our idea of ourselves as inferior in some way, we resist. This can be observed when people win the lottery and wind up homeless 10 years later. We have to be a vibrational match to a new reality and not be attached to our former convictions. Otherwise, nothing will change. Many people are resistant to the idea of the law of attraction and will refuse to believe existence could be so simple. They will then continue to struggle believing that it is just how life is. 

 

#3 - Don’t Get Precise

 

It is important to understand the vibrational equivalent of what you want. You can have an image or a feeling about what you want that makes you feel good. But as you get more precise about how it is supposed to manifest, the universe has fewer ways that it can give it to you. There are millions of ways to get rich. But you can only possibly contemplate one or two methods which would involve years of work and labor. Consider that every successful person has vastly changed their business models. And they do so regularly. They might have a general idea about where they want to go, but they definitely innovate and change as these opportunities present themselves. So get happy and positive about the future, but don’t get too precise about how it will materialize. 

3 Ways to Gain a Comprehensive Understanding of Mind

The mind is something of a vague concept that can be hard to comprehend. Even scientists disagree on the nature of the mind and matter. But you don’t need to understand everything. You just need to know enough to further yourself and understand how you actually operate, so you can get to where you need to be. 

 

#1 - Read and Research

 

The best way to gain an understanding of the mind and of your personal inner psychology is to read and research. There are many amazing books that have been written on the art of psychology and persuasion. But it is also good to read a wide variety of literature, and you might consider reading some Buddhist or Zen material which describes the more esoteric nature of the mind. Additionally, there are some very interesting discoveries that have been made by scientific research about how the mind operates. By reading about the experience of others you can contrast them with your own thoughts and ideas. There are cultures with distinctly unique philosophies and ideas that are opposite to those in the West. Contrast is an excellent way to increase understanding and open-mindedness. 

 

#2 - Meditation

 

Meditation is the art of observing your own thoughts. It is the quickest and most widely recognized way to understand your own mind. Even if you are incredibly intelligent and successful, an ability to stand outside yourself is necessary in order for progress. Otherwise, the same habits and tendencies will simply keep repeating themselves. Outside of meditation, it is a good idea to become very strict about what you pay attention to. Do not consume words and images that are not pleasant to your mind. You will have to deal with them in meditation later. 

 

#3 - Learn From Your Emotions

 

Much has been said about the power of the mind in terms of generating our reality. The missing link in what could be arguably described as a left-brained society is the focus on feelings. Our emotions are a response to whether we are happy or sad with our current environment, in a sophisticated real-time feedback system. Emotions have been brushed aside as illogical tendencies, which is a drastic mistake. If you feel bad, it is time to change your thoughts and your situation quickly. Over time, you will gain experience with regard to how intricate the emotional system really is and how it can serve to guide your thoughts. 

 

4 Inspirational Business Leaders With Incredible Mental Strength

In order to succeed in the realm of business, mental strength is essential. All of the most well-known leaders have amazing internal resources which enables them to get handle anything life throws at them. Here are 4 of the more admirable business leaders of the 21st century. 

 

#1 - Oprah Winfrey

 

If there was ever somebody who could be said to have overcome adversity, it is Oprah Winfrey. She was born into poverty and molested as a child, giving birth to a premature child at 14 who died in infancy. Nevertheless, she became the most iconic African America women of the 21st century and still remains very relevant as a symbol of female empowerment. She becomes the first African American billionaire and did much to change popular culture and sexuality taboos. 

 

#2 - Bill Gates

 

Bill Gates is the second richest person in the world with a net worth of over $60 Billion. Gates is the creator of Microsoft and while he still sits on the board, his efforts are mainly focused towards the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates has pledged all of his fortunes away to charity instead of to his wife and children. Gates is more interested in humanitarian issues such as climate change and diseases than just technology. Early in his career, he was asked why he didn’t just give sell Microsoft and give the money to charity if he cared so much. He answered that he could make more money with Microsoft and use it to help the disadvantaged. And that is exactly what has happened. 

#3 - Donald Trump

 

While Donald Trump is something of a polarizing figure, there can be little argument that he possesses formidable mental strength. In 1999, he said that Oprah Winfrey would be his running mate for a presidential campaign. He has endured a barrage of criticism for his border wall, personal misconduct, and Russian collusion allegations. But the president has an immensely strong psychology that has endured attacks from all sides. He is also a finance magnate with a global presence in the hotel and casino industry. 

#4 - Mark Zuckerberg

 

Zuckerberg is the current CEO of Facebook and has performed very well to remain a position of power in his company, despite his youth. Under Zuckerberg, Facebook has won a large number of court battles. He also undertook a challenge to kill his own meat for a year to understand sustainable farming, which he completed.