10 Ways to become a Master of Productivity

Productivity by Trending Topics 2019

How often we overlook the simple things that can lead us to success! Your path to a successful job or career depends heavily on your ability to be productive with your time and resources. Being productive is one of those things that is so easy for us to overlook as we get wrapped up in one task or another and find ourselves in a time-warped reality that works against us rather than for us.

In the year 2019, you are living in a world that moves at breakneck speed.

Information overload is common and is the rule, not the exception. Advice on

how to be more productive is as common as brushing your teeth every morning.

The temptation to do what we have always done is great, but it can also lead us to a

false reality.

Part of your job, when you are looking for a job, is to expand your skills as you

search. It may also be one of the rare times you can take a step back and

evaluate your methods of productivity. Improving your productivity can mean

throwing out the old and implementing the new, but not always. Sometimes the

smallest of changes in how we go about being more productive can harvest the

greatest results.

With that mindset, a tenacious attitude that encompasses the concept of

mastering productivity will give you a competitive edge over all others who will

not take the time to be more efficient with their time and habits. Practically

speaking, here are 10 ways to become a master of productivity:

1. Construct a list of things you need to stop doing.

Productivity has as much to do with what you don't do as it does with what you do! In the spirit of productivity, this is not meant to be a long and involved process. Write down ten to fifteen things that you feel you can honestly commit to not doing anymore starting today.

Each item on that list should be an answer to the question, Am I committing to stop doing this because it's holding me back from being being my best? You know those New Year's resolutions that you committed to just a little over a month ago? These are your anti resolutions, so to speak.

This list can include things that are big or small. The most productive people understand how little things they do repeatedly add up to significant time commitments and unproductive results. For instance, you might decide not to open your email immediately when you wake in the morning. You might commit to only viewing social media accounts, or specific accounts anyway, at a certain hour of the day. Depending on your situation, you may be taking on daily tasks that you don't need to do yourself. So think about adding to this list things that you can have other people do. Outsourcing simple tasks can add up quickly and provide you with more time to focus on the things that you do well.

2. Organise yourself.

If your nature is to organize yourself by keeping a planner, calendar or some other organizational system that you rely heavily upon, take time in the evening to write down your plans, strategies or appointments for the next day. When we take time away from the beginning of our day and plan these tasks in the morning, we are more susceptible to unpredictable interruptions and distractions. A 15-minute nightly routine can result in the sense of confidence and comfort when you start your day the next morning.

3. Sometime this week, answer these two questions and write them down.

First,what productive strategy did you do in the past year that helped move you in the

direction of success?

Second, can you apply any of those specific plans or

extract those strategies so that they will be useful to you today as well as in the

year to come?

4. Clean house.

In some ways, this should be taken literally.We don't always recognize immediately how cluttered both our home and workspace can become. Depending on your personality and your outlook on organizational efforts, cleaning up those spaces can illuminate some of that dark energy that's being sucked out of you every day because you forget your surroundings. If you work or live in a crowded or messy physical environment, chances are it may be wearing on you more than you realize. In fact, if you could draw a picture of what your brain feels like and set it side by side to a view of your surroundings, they might look surprisingly similar!

One excellent method of doing this is to clean your spaces based on category rather than location. Take your home or apartment for instance. Often, we start with the kitchen and then move to the bathroom, and then to the bedroom office, etc. Consider instead to approach your uncluttering by starting with categories like clothes, papers, furniture, books, lighting, etc. in deciding if you should keep something or get rid of it by donating it or throwing it away. You need only ask a single question in doing so, Does this provide value in my life? If your answer is no, rid yourself of it. If your answer is yes, keep it! It doesn't get any simpler than that, it is an interesting and unique approach, but give it a shot and see if you don't find yourself in a more happy place and better mindset than doing it the old way.

5. Grow your network.

As you think about the people you know who are already a part of your working network, decide who's missing from that list. Your network, if you are like most of us, might be skewed in one way or another. In other words, if you like technology regardless of your career or your potential career, you may find that you have a disproportionate amount of people in your network who are interested and or magnificent at technology. But perhaps you might benefit from adding to your network people who are creative. Does your network include

musicians, artists, writers, poets, jugglers? It is tough to estimate the value of

people that you don't currently associate with, but you will find you learn so

much about things that you didn't know you needed to know by expanding your

professional and personal network of people.

6. Love your procrastination.

This may sound odd at first, but this productivity practice alone could change your entire life. The idea is to stop denying that you procrastinate. We all do. And at times, we all deny that we do. Embrace procrastination, but at the same time make a commitment to do something that you enjoy while you are procrastinating. In other words, if you're putting off organizing your desk drawers that have accumulated an overabundance of stuff over time, go fishing, or exercise, or hang out with a friend.

If you are going to procrastinate, you might just as well spend your time doing things you enjoy rather than sitting around and feeling bad about putting things off. When you

finally do get back to doing what you have been avoiding, you willl have a much better

outlook.

7. Talk less and listen more.

We are all different in this way. Some of us enjoy talking and having an audience, and others don't. This can particularly be the case when you're working in teams or are collaborating with others. The dynamics of social interaction that have been studied and researched ad nausea are all true! Depending on our role on any given team effort, we quickly fall into

the categories of listeners, doers, antagonizers, peacemakers, etc.

Instead of accepting your role, give some thought to being more purposeful about how often

you speak and what you say. For most of us, that involves talking less and listening more. We become strategists rather than puppets. We control the conversation's direction rather than fall prey to its organic failings.

By no means should you ever hold back anything that you actually feel brings value to your team. But the truth is that a good portion of the time spent collaborating with others is wasted on filling the air with useless and unproductive statements and questions. When you become a more calculated thinker and participant in every collaborative effort, you will become self-aware as to when it's best to ask an open-ended question which naturally takes more time to answer in a group setting, and when to ask a yes or no question. Not only that, chances are

at least a few other people may recognize your strategy merely because it moves the conversations along and makes everyone's efforts more productive. If you ever get to the point of mastering this particular strategy, your leadership skills will draw people to you like a magnet.

8. Follow routines, but never follow routines that are unproductive.

Most of us define our daily routine's, whether at work or home, by attaching action to

reaction. For instance, your method at work might be to check your email immediately after returning from lunch. That's great if that provides productivity for you. But if that becomes a distraction that keeps you away from finishing work that you started before you went to lunch and sends you off in another direction,change that habit. You probably already know that you will only find that you need to catch up later anyway. Leave your email alone until there is a more appropriate time. We are creatures of habit, but we are not creatures of strategy.

We become more productive when we become better strategists at using our time.

9. Recognize when you are no longer productive.

We all need to know when to quit. Somewhere along the way, we have equated all types of quitting with failure, and nothing could be further from the truth. Time spent does not equal quality. When you are in the middle of a project, and you realize that your brain is disengaged as you only go through the motions, it's time to quit. Not quit entirely, of course, but stop by walking away and finding even brief moments that will re- energize you.

That might be a quick conversation with a friend or looking out the window, or taking a 10-minute walk. You have to know yourself well enough to know what it is that's going to put your brain back together so that you can approach your project with productivity upon your return.

One note about this particular strategy, it's imperative that whoever it is that you're working for, whether it be your direct boss or the company philosophy as a whole, need to be

on board with this strategy toward productivity. A wise manager or boss will not only understand the value of knowing when to quit, but they will also encourage it. It's also an excellent question to ask in one form or another during an interview or when you speak with people who work for a company or business that you might want to work with.

10. Prioritize.

This may seem the most obvious productivity tool, but I would argue that while it may be the most obvious strategy, it's also the rather than the most underused strategy. Prioritizing comes easier for some people than it does for others. But there is fallibility for both if it becomes a habit rather than an approach. Prioritizing involves the idea of both qualifying and quantifying tasks, the ability to give accurate estimates as to the time those tasks may take, and the crucial component of communicating with others your reasons for prioritizing how you do. So many times we know why we are doing what we do first, second, third, etc. but the people around us who are also equally invested in the outcome of any given project will not only appreciate knowing your prioritization reasoning, but they will become more productive themselves.

I hope you find these 10 ways to become a master of productivity helpful in achieving your goals.