HOW TO STAY PRODUCTIVE
KEEPING PRODUCTIVE LONG TERM
Productivity is key to achieving your goals and building the best foundation for yourself. But being productive for a day, and consistently showing up and being productive as a constant are two very different things. Here we walk through a few tips on how to stay productive.
HAVE A ROUTINE
There’s a reason why we’re called Good Mornings. A routine is so key to staying on track and being productive. The key to productivity is to make your tasks as embedded and seamless in your day as possible. That way you fall into starting because it is a routine. Everyone who is an expert in productivity will tell you that the one thing you need to do to beat procrastination is to start…..well being productive is all about having a routine that automatically triggers you into STARTING what you need to get done. Your morning routine not only sets you up for success throughout the day, but as you make small, incremental compound changes it will also enable you to be hugely productive; seamlessly executing the tasks that you need to get done.
KEEP AWAY FROM DISTRACTIONS
We have such a sensory overload of notifications and distractions now. As someone who grew up in the era of calling your friends on the landline and hanging up before 17:59, and then arguing with your siblings over who got to use the twenty minutes of dial up broadband time before the phone was ‘switched off’ for the evening I can truly say we are far more easily distracted now than we were 10 years ago. Because we invite distractions into our lives (notifications, devices, even background content) it’s now harder to concentrate and remain productive. The key to this is to physically keep away from distractions. Not everyone’s distractions are the same so it’s not as simple as keeping your phone in another room (although this does help). To help stick the course in your journey to productivity, write down everything you do that keeps you from focusing, and physically distance yourself for 25 minutes – see what you can get done and how much you stay on track.
LEARN TO SAY NO
Such a small word…such loaded connotations. As humans, we are pre-disposed to please. We can’t help it. But when you say yes to everything, what you are actually doing is giving away chunks of your time. Make sure when you say ‘yes’ to something it’s because it’s either critical or serves your purpose. This extends to your personal life as well. No one is going to care if you don’t go to the party, say yes to what serves you, and learn the art of saying no to what is holding you back.
COMMUNICATE WELL
And not just communicate your no well, we mean on all your devices and across all of your mediums. The same as increased distractions, technology has also increased the number of different ways that we communicate with each other. With such a multitude of means of communication make sure you’re using each one efficiently. We go into more depth about effective communication as you continue our productivity series but a good start is to ignore the noise of cc, clear meetings which don’t provide good outcomes, test yourself to reduce slacks to one concise message that gets exactly what you need across, call instead of email spamming, set times to check your email and don’t be afraid to put an OOO on. Remember that focus is half the game and if you are in responsive mode for communication then you will be pulling focus.
DON'T PANIC
And if you go off track…don’t panic! Get back to your routine. Being productive is simply using your time mindfully, that’s why the Morning Routines are set up to give you the best start to the day, you fall off one day – you have your blueprint to default to the next.
