Tag Archives: Productivity

Apr23

5 Things you can do in the Evening for more Productive Days

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5 Things you can do in the Evening for more Productive Days

Does this happen to you? You’re off to bed, pajamas on, face washed, teeth brushed, ready to get some much-needed shuteye. You’re thinking “well, today wasn’t so bad. I forgot a couple of things but I promise tomorrow I’ll do better!” The morning after, the 3rd alarm rings, signaling that you are now late because you hit the snooze button twice. You skip breakfast, grab some coffee at the store and head off to work looking decent but not really fabulous. Your day now spirals into a game of catch up. Then again, you’re off to bed promising to do better tomorrow.

Here’s the secret: good days start the night before. So if you want to have a productive day being less stressed and less frazzled, then you should prep the night before. Start creating your productive tomorrow, today.

Here are some tips to get you started:
1. Get your things ready to go – make a list of all the things you need for your day and get them ready during the evening before. Make cold brew coffee that’s ready to pour into your favorite coffee tumbler. Get your gym bag ready if you plan on squeezing in a workout the next day. Pack your office bag. Ladies have different bags for different outfits so invest in a bag organizer that you can just transfer. Pick your work clothes out so that you don’t have to waste time rummaging through your closet in the morning.

2. The 5-minute rule – no it’s not about food. The 5-minute rule is about giving yourself 5 minutes to pick up things and put them back where they belong. This goes for shirts, keys, wallets, bowls, cups, towels, and trash..and whole host of other things. A quick run through the house to tidy up makes it easier for tomorrow.

3. Check your schedule – quickly check what your agenda for tomorrow is. What are you doing? When are you doing it? Who are you with? Prepare accordingly.

4. To-Do list – make a prioritized to-do list. Extract your 3 top priorities (try to keep it at 3, otherwise you will feel overwhelmed) and put them at the very top of the list. Everything else can be moved around except for our top 3. Keep your list short and focused.

5. Decompress – at the end of the day, decompress. Try not to think about work, the news, other worries, or the state of affairs of the nation before you go to bed. Turn off your tech 3 hours before going to bed (or whatever is doable). Just turn it off already. The blue light from the screens disturbs your sleep patterns. Once you get off the screen, think about what you want to achieve for the next day to help you get into a productive mindset. You can also use that time to give thanks for all that you are grateful for.

How about you. What are your evening wind down rituals to help you get ready for a productive day? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Apr8

What is the Secret to Becoming More Productive? It’s Not What You Think.

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What is the Secret to Becoming More Productive? It’s Not What You Think.

When we think about productivity, we think about the people who seem to get everything checked, done, and dusted off on an arbitrary ‘to do’ list. We think about the account manager who has more work, more clients, more logged hours. We think about the parent who gets the shopping list right, the kids bathed and off to school, the bake sale cookies made, the house spotlessly clean. We think about the student who get to all the classes on time, passes all the papers, does extra curricular activities, and even has time for a relationship. When it comes to productivity, we think that the people who do more are more productive.

While these examples seem like the perfectly put together life most of us dream of, it is also a recipe for burnout. The truth is, doing more is not a very sustainable way of living. When you get stuck in the mindset that you have to do more in order to be productive, you paint yourself into a corner and start a mindset of being busy for the sake of being busy. So, do you want to know the secret? The key to being more productive is to carve out time for self care.

Now you might be this person I’m talking about. The one who has all their meetings scheduled, their work deliverables in progress, and their social calendar packed with engagements. I salute you. Most of us though, need a breather. Most of us need to take time for self care.

Before you go and book a spa session, let me explain a bit further. Self care is more than just going to the spa or doing a face mask. It could be, but it is more than that. Self care is any deliberate action that you make time for in order to nurture your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing. At its very basic, self care is all about cultivating the relationship you have with yourself.

Take a step back. Do you like being the go to person for all things at work? Do you like having your social calendar filled to the brim? Do you like being able to take care of everyone, all the time? These are all things to aspire for but are outside of yourself. All of them are about other people. In order to be more productive, you have to invest in giving your whole self (mind, body, spirit) the care it needs in order to function and flourish at your highest level.

The science backs it up: people who invest in self care have better cognitive abilities. They have better focus and concentration and perform better over all. They don’t run themselves to the ground and they know when to take the time out to focus on themselves.

You are an investment, treat yourself as worthy.

Do you have self care tips that you want to share with us? Share them in the comments! Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

May14

More Productivity Hacks

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More Productivity Hacks

A few weeks ago, I ran a series of posts on finding efficient work strategies and discovering productivity hacks. You can read about them here, here, and here.

Here are a few more tips, but this time, the tips are all about mindfulness so that you can find the best hacks that work for you. Let’s proceed.

Find your objective:
Is your goal to reduce your stress while working? Is it to work efficiently within your work hours to avoid overtime? Is it to manage a 4 day work week? Find your goal and focus on that. Clear your mind so that you can find the answers to your questions and write them down. Once you have drilled down to what your main priority is, you can create a plan and tailor your productivity hacks around that.

Manage your energy:
You have to complete step no. 1 to get to this as you would have to be clear on what needs to get done before you can allocate your resources and energy to your tasks.

Focus:
In this day and age, there are hundreds of things that bid for our attention: phones, noise, social media, the smell (and promise of) food, etc. When you learn to control your attention and focus, you are ready for high performance and productivity. Avoid distractions and time wasters like the plague. Don’t multitask. Create an environment that you love and is conducive to focused work.

Have a system:
Figure out and craft a system that works for you. Start by clearing out your space and getting rid of clutter. I don’t mean just physical clutter like papers and trinkets. I also mean digital clutter. That would entail clearing out your desktop as well. Create organizing and filing systems based on how you work – for example, labelled digital folders, a desk organizer for paper files, cloud storage or portable hard drives for backup files, etc.

Use a calendar or planner to efficiently manage your time. List down no more than 1-3 priorities per week (list more and you’re just going back to square one). Then list down action steps you should take to get those priorities done. Here’s where your to-do list comes in. It’s best to map this out in a planner or calendar at the start of the week.

Stay on task:
There are productivity techniques listed on this blog that can help you stay on task:
● The Pomodoro technique
● The Get Things Done technique
● The Eat the Frog technique
● The Action Method
These are just a few of them. Find one that works for you and is the best fit for your productivity goals.

Avoid distractions:
There are a few apps that can help you avoid distractions on your PC, apps that can help you avoid getting lost in cat videos or stalking your ex. This can help you hit those deadlines or finish writing that report.

What productivity hacks work for you? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard!

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Apr2

Finding Work Efficiency Part 3: Evening Hacks

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Finding Work Efficiency Part 3: Evening Hacks

For the past 2 weeks, I talked about my quest for discovering productivity hacks and improving and developing my work strategies. I’ve shared some of the things I learned in parts 1 and 2 of this 3-part series. I talked about all day hacks last week. This week I would like to share the strategies I learned to make your evenings more productive.

Evenings are supposed to be your ME time, so use that time wisely. I’m still trying to work out the best time to set for myself for a “hard stop” or the absolute time when I absolutely stop working. It changes with the season and depending on the amount of work I have (freelancers do have peak and lean seasons, you know). Right now, it is set to 6pm. I’ve set an alarm for myself on my phone. It is mostly working.

Evening Hacks
Evenings are used to create a clear delineation between work and personal time. It’s when you find the time to do things for yourself and your family. But evenings can also be used to make sure that you are optimized for productivity for the next day. Besides, if you can map out your day, you’re sure to have less stress and less things to worry about.

● Clear your desk – I have a “closing shop” routine. It’s something I do to signal to my brain that the work day is over and personal time has begun. At the end of each work day, I declutter my work station and wipe down my keyboard and monitors. You may have your own version of closing shop that involves more than powering down your PC or laptop. Whatever it is, develop a routine that helps get you into a mindset of leaving your work-related worries at work and starting an off-work mindset. That way, you can power down and get some much-needed rest instead of having work related worries that sit on your mind long after the work day is through.

● Lay out your clothes – Ever heard of the term “Decision Fatigue”? Decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making [1]. Laying out your clothes (or setting them aside in your closet) can eliminate one decision making task for the next day. It might not seem like much now, but if you’re constantly making decisions as part of your work, then not having to choose an attire would be a welcome break. If you don’t believe me, look at Obama, Jobs, and Zuckerberg. Obama is famously quoted in a 2012 Vanity Fair article to say: “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits, I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.[2]”

● More apps – When you’re laying in bed and trying to get some sleep, this is when most ideas hit you. This is also the perfect time to remember the milk…and some eggs…and an air freshener, you have to get those. I think this is universally true for all of us. Random things and small reminders hit us in the middle of the night. Instead of worrying about forgetting them, write them down. I already mentioned that I use a note-taking app. I keep it simple and use Google Keep on my phone. You can use the apps that come with your phone, or you can use Evernote, OmniNotes, or OneNote.

What are your evening hacks? We’d love to hear about your productivity hacks. Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard!

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama

Mar26

Finding Work Efficiency Part 2: All Day Hacks

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Finding Work Efficiency Part 2: All Day Hacks

Last week I talked about my quest for discovering productivity hacks and improving and developing my work strategies. I’ve shared some of the things I learned in part 1 of this 3-part series. I talked about morning hacks last week. This week I would like to share the strategies I learned to make you more efficient at work for the rest of the day.

So, some of the things I talked about last week were morning rituals and techniques to start the day right. This time, let’s talk about the hacks I use throughout the rest of the day to help keep myself on point.

 

All Day Hacks
I have this phone app called “Fabulous” (I’m not paid to advertise this, but I use it because I find that it works for me). It is an app that helps you build healthy rituals into your life using science-based methods. It’s kind of like a gamified habit builder. I’ve set it up so that it reminds me to do things that can impact my productivity. Some examples are: drinking water, eating a healthful lunch, and creating the next day’s action plan.
● Drinking water – everyone knows it is best to stay hydrated. We can easily forget to drink water when we’re knee deep and too focused on work, but did you know that drinking water can make the brain work 14% faster? That’s something to think about.
● Eating a healthful lunch – notice I said healthful. If we’re mindful of what we eat, we can avoid the brain fog that comes after eating too much processed food.
● Creating the next day’s action plan – this is my “wind down” activity for the day. It signals that my work day is done and that the next step is rest and relaxation. I usually jot down 3 (maximum) priority tasks on my office whiteboard. Prepping for the next day also gives me a head start for tomorrow’s activities. It gives me peace of mind to know that I have a battle plan for the next day and won’t be running around like a headless chicken.

Speaking of apps. I use a note-taking app that helps me immensely with little things that I remember during the day. I don’t rely fully on mental notes. I take actual notes – I write down little things that I remember, like “check the status of print proof delivery” in a note taking app on my phone. These little reminders could easily slip through the cracks. I remember most things as soon as I finish my first cup of coffee, but I don’t like leaving anything to chance. So, I commit small reminders to paper, or in this case a phone app and do this for the rest of the day.

But I find that the best strategy for not forgetting the “things – to – do” that pop up randomly in your mind is to just take immediate action the moment you remember them. If it’s a task that you can do in less than 5 minutes, then go do it. Some examples are sending a follow-up or a thank you email or correcting a spelling error on a document.

What apps help you become more productive throughout the day? We’d love to hear about your productivity hacks. Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O. The Help