Seven Tips to Help You be More Productive in the New Year
It’s a new year, so it’s time to re-evaluate your habits and productivity level. We often get complacent during the year and old habits sneak back in, stealing our productivity. A few of the top productivity killers, according to this article, are focusing too much on the future, delaying decisions, technology distractions (social media, anyone?), multi-tasking, perfectionism, and worrying. Seems that everything on that list can be controlled by self-discipline. So here are seven tips to help you stay productive.
- Don’t multi-task. Focus on one task at a time, when we try and multi-task we feel overwhelmed and end up not getting much of anything done, while feeling like we are doing everything.
- Have a schedule. If you wake up early, don’t let it go to waste, let that be a time to be really productive, and if you are a night owl, let that be when you get everything done. Make your schedule work for you, don’t let time own you.
- Do the things you DON’T want to do, first. That way you have motivation to get it done and work on the things you really enjoy.
- Throw perfectionism out the window. You could spend hours trying to get the perfect blog post written, and it would still not be perfect. Don’t worry about perfect, it doesn’t exist.
- Stay in the moment. Don’t get caught up in worrying or thinking about your future, set a time in the morning to envision your future for a couple of minutes, then spend the rest of the day working on the process to reach your vision.
- To-do lists! Yes, with a pen and paper, cross off what you get done. Noting that sense of accomplishment will keep you going throughout the day.
- Stay off Facebook and other social medias. Unless it is part of your job to network, stay off of it until all of your task are finished.
Note the productivity killers and turn them around. Be conscious of your decisions and where your mind is throughout the day. That is part of being present, don’t run on auto-pilot throughout your day and expect to have a very productive day. I know with these tips, you can start your new year on the right foot
