Tag Archive for: how to be more productive

How Doing Nothing Can Help You Get More Done

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I meet people all the time who struggle with their productivity because they believe that being efficient means doing as much as humanly possible, all day every day. Not true! Productivity is more about quality over quantity, as well as prioritizing your time to suit what is important to you.

I love finding other productivity nerds like myself who are just as passionate about this stuff. Like Chris Bailey author of The Productivity Project. Chris recently did a TEDx talk about the year he spent trying to hack his productivity. He found that the most important lesson he learned was how valuable meditation was in his day to day life.

While most people see meditation as doing ‘nothing’ Chris found that these quiet moments allowed him to reflect on his day and focus on the tasks ahead.

Being productive doesn’t mean you have to be physically doing something all the time!

Here are some of Chris’s top tips:

The Rule of Three – Keep it simple. Give yourself just three tasks that you want to have accomplished by the end of the day. By limiting how much you have to get done, you can be certain you’ll complete everything you set out to do! Once you’ve finished those three tasks you can move onto other smaller chores.

Quit Multitasking – I harp on about the perils of multitasking all the time so it’s good to see that someone else agrees with me! Chris points out that the more tasks you do at once, the less chance of success you have with any one task.

All Things in Moderation – You can’t be at your best if you haven’t slept well or had enough to eat. Balance your day and take care of yourself. Make sure to get a little exercise, as well as eat healthy meals. Chris is also a big believer in taking regularly breaks like me!

Disconnect – Technology is nice, but when we become reliant on it, it can really hamper our productivity. Treat the internet as a nice tool for occasional use instead of something you must have!

Let your Mind Wander – If you’re too busy rushing from one thing to another your mind never has a chance to relax. Downtime is often the best place for coming up with new ideas. It’s why I stopped reading articles at breakfast and just let myself have a peaceful moment! I’ve come up with so many ideas for my blog this way!

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P.S. If you like TEDx talks you should check out my friend Terri’s! It’s about why you should stop searching for your passion and it has over 1,000,000 views!

These Excuses Are Keeping You From Getting More Done

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Let’s be honest.  We all hold ourselves back in some way or another.

When we start to fall into a bad habit, it’s so much easier to blame something or someone else than to get to the root of the problem. When it comes to poor productivity habits, I’ve heard all the excuses.

I’ve been over a few of them before, but there are so many I thought I’d go over a few that you might be telling yourself these days and help you get past them:

“I’d be more organized if I had more money”

This excuse differs from the others in the sense that it is – technically – true. If we all had the money to afford personal assistants of course we would be more organized!

But just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you have to give up on organization altogether. There are plenty of free apps to help you plan your day. If all else fails pen and paper is pretty cheap!

Fix: Stop focusing on what you don’t have and start thinking about what you do. Read more

How to get Inbox Zero by Friday

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Social-Media-Post800x800Are your emails haunting you?

With the big, fat “UNREAD” number staring you in the face – how are you supposed to get any work done?

It’s looming in the back of your mind.  

You have to write back to this person or that person.

And then you end up doing nothing and missing deadlines and opportunities.

I understand!  The swamp of the email inbox is maddening.

Wouldn’t it be a miracle to actually get to INBOX ZERO by Friday?

“Yeah, right!” you say in your most sarcastic voice.

“Yeah, right!” I say in my most positive voice.

It can happen and I’ll get you there in just 5 days.  

Join me for my FREE 5-DAY EMAIL CHALLENGE and get Inbox Zero by Friday.

Sign up here.

Here’s what to expect:

Every day I’ll send an email with step-by-step instructions and an audio guide to wrangle your inbox. 

Each day there will be a prompt to help you organize and manage your inbox.  

And by Friday — you’ll have a handle on your inbox so you can stop drowning in unread messages, respond quicker and finally achieve inbox zero.

Let’s do this together!

4 Ways To Free Up 1 Hour of Your Day

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clock-407101_640Do you wish you had an extra hour in your day? Some time to finally get to all those things at the bottom of your to-do list or start working on that personal project?

There’s no need to wish for longer days, instead you can just make better use of the time you have.

The first thing you need to do is stop making excuses. It’s easy to put something off, claiming you’re too busy to get around to it. If you feel that way it’s probably because you aren’t using your time efficiently.

I recently wrote a blog post on how being aware of how much time you spend on various tasks can help increase your efficiency. I like to use RescueTime.com as it tracks how much time I spend on websites and applications. This helps me to pin point my biggest ‘time-wasters’ which I can then cut down on, or eliminate completely in future. Read more

Get a Stopwatch — You Need It!

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clock-782536_640The most common excuse for not being more productive is saying that you have too much going on.

“I’m too busy.” — you often say.  

Am I right?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret — no you aren’t!  

The thing with productivity is that it’s not how much you do, but how you do it. Do you get the most out of the time you have?  Or are you so busy because you fill your day with stuff you don’t really need to be doing.  That’s precious time you could be wasting!

The easiest way to find out is to track your time.

When I started making a note of how I spent my day I had a few surprises. For example, that thing I thought took only five minutes, actually took way longer than that.  It’s never just five minutes in the end.

There are a few apps and techniques to help you track your time. You can find them in the Entrepreneur.com article I wrote on time management.

Also if you want to know more about tracking your time, my friend and fellow author Laura Vanderkam is giving away her time tracking guide for free! Laura’s written several books including What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast and I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time.  If anyone knows how to manage time it’s her!