5 Hacks To Become More Productive

Here we will cover off 5 different hacks to become more productive. You will find a set of tools and exercises to help you become more effective with your time and improve your performance.

1. How do you spend your time?

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
– Peter Drucker

This is the first step towards increasing your performance. Knowing exactly Where and How you spend your time is the key to make any necessary changes.

Write down a list of all the activities you perform during the day and how much time you spend on each of them. This list should include sleep time, showering, cooking, social media, etc.

Do this exercise for at least 5 days and calculate the average time spent on each of those activities.

The next step is to understand the following:

1. What activities are aligned with your goals? How much time do you spend on these activities?

2. What activities are diverting you from your goals? How much time do you spend on those activities?

Once you have figured this out, it is time to start planning more effectively and gradually reduce the time spent on the activities described on point two, and start investing more time on the activities that bring you closer to your goals.

2. Pareto Principle: the 80/20 or 90/10 Rule

The principle is simple: find the 10-20% of the action that leads to 80-90% of results. 

This is a great exercise when it comes to finding out what activities you should truly invest your time on, the ones that drive most of the outcomes.

Equally effective, is to look at those activities that are not producing the desired results and that can be eliminated, leaving you with more time to focus on the first ones.

3. Super focused time blocks

Due to an immense number of stimuli coming from all the different devices we are constantly exposed to, the attention span is dramatically dropping.

The aim of this exercise is to make you focused on one task at a time, directing 100% of your attention to it and avoid any possible distractions.

Concentration, Focus & Determination.

• Turn off your phone or put it out of reach
• Turn off the TV or any other screens
• Only listen to music if it really helps you to focus on the task
• Close any unnecessary tabs on your computer, mainly your email
• Put these time blocks on your calendar
• If working in a busy environment, put your headphones on to reduce the chances of people distracting/talking to you

When working with these time blocks, remember to include breaks in between. Regular breaks help you distress, recharge, and refocus.

4. What are my priorities?

Establishing priorities is an effective way to do the most important tasks first. Although, quite often we struggle to understand what our priorities are and what activities should be done in the first place.

A simple way to approach this dilemma is to ask the opposite question: What can be postponed?

Answering this question will give you a clearer idea of what is not so urgent and by doing so, you can have a clearer idea of what should be prioritized.

Other questions to help you figure out your priorities:

• What task/activity will bring me closer to my goals?
• What will happen if I don’t complete this task today?
• Will the completion of this task make the rest of the workflow easier?
• Will the completion of this task release any stress or anxiety?
• If I could only focus on one task today, what would it be?

Focus on the right things. Get the right things done.

5. Create a Planner

Planning your weeks, days, or even months in advance is a great way to keep you on track and avoid distractions.

Establish clear and defined goals to accomplish during that specific time frame.

Start by creating a weekly plan with all the tasks you need to get done. Then, include these tasks in your daily to-do list. As we tend to procrastinate on major, challenging, and unclear tasks, we recommend breaking these down into smaller ones as this makes them look easier to accomplish.

6. Tools to increase productivity (Bonus)

Below we listed a few of hundreds of apps and software that can help you increase your productivity. These tools range from project management and note-taking, to screen time management.

Project Management and To-Do Lists:

• todoist
• Trello
• Slack
• Asana

Note-taking:

• Evernote
• Google Keep

App and time trackers:

• Offtime
• Clockify

We’ve reviewed 5 effective hacks to become more productive. Although, understanding how we spend our time is a key process in increasing productivity. Use some of the exercises and tools above to get the right things done.

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