Looking to increase your productivity level? Well, you are on the right web page, so keep reading and start improving your productivity.
It is challenging for many people to complete their daily work as they find finishing their tasks difficult and take routine work as a burden. Daily routine tasks are not a burden, but as many people are not naturally produced, they feel that there is not enough time to complete their tasks.
People who think that they can’t finish their tasks on time can be productive and will be able to do more if they strive to improve their productivity. It is only a matter of altering your habits to get more things done.
Being productive is natural for some people, and that’s why they get more things done. If you seek satisfaction, there are some productivity hacks that you need to look at. Making them, your habits will boost your productivity level and help you complete your tasks in less time.
Five productive hacks to get more done are explained below:
Implement the Pomodoro technique
The Pomodoro technique helps you in concentrating on your tasks and finishing them before deadlines. Its methodology is very simple; break down your tasks and assign them a specific time slot. To achieve a goal, you make small objectives, and achieve each objective eventually results in achieving your goal.
Working in short breaks saves you from exhaustion and boosts your productivity. Pomodoro works as a cyclic system; when a smaller task is finished, another task gets started after a short interval.
You need only a timer to implement the Pomodoro technique. Here is how you can use the Pomodoro technique to complete your tasks as given below:
- Choose your task.
- Set your timer for a specific time.
- Work until the timer is on after completing check the task.
- Take a short break.
- After the break, set the timer again and restart the process.
These are the simple steps you need to follow to accomplish your tasks. Keep one thing in mind that you have to restart the whole process while doing tasks with the Pomodoro technique if you get distracted during the session.
Utilize Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that if you assign more time to a little task, it will increase the complexity, increasing the stress level and tension about completing the task. Assigning the right amount of time to complete a task will help you reduce its complexity.
Utilizing Parkinson’s Law means that you have to run against the clock. Let’s say you have to complete a task within two days, complete it in one day. It is crucial to accomplish the task in the given time; only then it will improve your productivity.
Giving yourself the time to complete these tasks should be like all the other deadlines assigned by your boss or client; only then will you be able to utilize Parkinson’s Law, and your productivity will boost up.
Implementing this Law is not that easy. At the start, you will not beat the clock when you divide the time allotment in half. You have to check how accurate your projects are on the list with their deadlines. To find something that works, you need to experiment with different time slots.
The Five-Minute Rule for Beating Procrastination
Procrastination is an act of delaying a task by perceiving it as very difficult work. And it is one of the biggest factors affecting our productivity. Mostly we procrastinate at the start of a project because of fear or uncertainty and sometimes both. The five-minute rule can be really helpful in overcoming the unclear start of our projects. Let’s see how it works.
Motivation is the key to accomplish any task on time. Mostly procrastination is created by either uncertainty or fear. The fear of failure, criticism, or stress ends up demotivating ourselves and the task delays as well.
The five-minute rule works to overcome the inhibition and allow us to complete our tasks without any procrastination. You can refocus on the task after the first five minutes of work. This helps you to control yourself and allows you to choose what you want to do or whatnot. It helps increase motivation and decrease emotional & effort cost while we engage ourselves in the task as we worked on it for five minutes.
So if you are suffering from procrastination, start a task and work on it for five minutes, and you will find increased productivity. Once you start the project, you will end up with a positive attitude.
Apply the 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. This rule has no concern with time; it only suggests focusing on your efforts and working hard on the significant areas and less on smaller stuff, but do not ignore them. This rule applies to all your daily tasks and helps you to increase your productivity.
When it comes to applying the 80/20 rule on your daily to-do list, you should first count your most significant projects. Spending your time on significant tasks will increase your productivity rather than using your energy on smaller tasks. Take your time to recognize the important tasks and prioritize them as they will give you 80% of what you want.
To increase your productivity, you can take it even further. The 80/20 rule states that working on a task for a long time will help you achieve the major part of your goal with only 20 percent of effort. Let’s say if you are a writer, you should break down your task into some simple steps as mentioned below:
- Write the article.
- Check for grammatical mistakes.
- Make corrections and publish it.
Focusing on your efforts will result in the majority of your work done and improve your productivity level.
Stop Multitasking
Multitasking is a good way to handle more than one task simultaneously and get more work done, but it can reduce your productivity. We think that we are achieving more, but we are not putting the attention required to focus on the tasks. It slows down the progress as we shift our brains from one task to another, reducing the productivity of up to 40%.
Researches have shown that when you switch from one task to another, your brain has to refocus and continually shift, which takes precious time, and during all this, your productivity gets hit severely.
The worst thing is that while doing a complex task, you lose more time while multitasking. So if you want to increase your productivity, you need to stop multitasking and focus on completing one task at a time.
Importantly, multitasking enables you to give the same importance to all the tasks. As discussed earlier, it affects your brain. Some tasks require less time & effort, but while multitasking, you are not mentally alert to differentiate, and it results in reducing your productivity.
We hope that the above-discussed productivity hacks will help you to get more work done. Follow them properly to see the best and effective results.