You’ve made it to the second part of this two-part productivity & time management series!
If you haven’t read the first part of these series where you will be given actual time management techniques (used by many successful people such as author of the The 4-Hour Week, Tim Ferriss), go and have a read of that!
How do you get more done in 3 hours than most do in a week? This question sounds unbelievable right? 3 hours vs 168 hours (I think the 168 hours will knock that 3 hours out if you tell me…)
But I have quickly learned otherwise, and so will you hopefully. In the previous post, we looked at some productivity tips and techniques including Pareto’s Principle and the Parkinson Law that if implemented properly in your life can give you more results in a few days than in a week.
In this post, you will be shown how to get more work done in a day through actionable steps you can add into your routine now, without completely changing it. These 13 strategies for getting more work done in less time can be used as time management tips for work or at home, or productivity tips that will help you in every day life.
By combining the time management techniques and ideas from both of the posts, and getting into a strict routine, you will be able to achieve more in 3 hours than you would do in a whole week.
Actionable time management tips to add into your routine now
1. Sleep well & drink water
Let’s get this simple tip over with, it may seem a bit DUH, but it really is an essential point. Drinking water will improve your memory, alertness and attention.
Having a good amount of sleep is essential for your physical and mental health. While you’re sleeping, your body goes through a recovery process, your heart rests, your body tissues repair amongst other things. Sleeping well also helps the brain and promotes better memory and problem-solving skills.
So I’m sure you can imagine what will happen if you have less sleep and hardly any water.
2. Delegate tasks to others to free up time
If you are in the position where you have others that can do tasks for you, use them. I mean don’t use them like that, pay them and everything, but use their skills to your advantage.
While they’re running around doing the unimportant errands you need to get done, you can focus on the important stuff.
If you don’t have a team of people who you can ask to get things done for you, you can use the internet to find people around the world to do virtual tasks (such as setting up meetings, organizing events or even creating content/ developing your website) for you.
Compared to the time you would have wasted to get these things done yourself, you can acquire a lot more profit or get a lot more useful things done in that time that will benefit you in the long run.
3. Don’t be a perfectionist
Don’t waste time creating multiple checklists, to-do lists and schedules, just START.
Perfectionism can in a lot of cases be the root cause of time-wasting. In the time that you planned what to do, someone already did it.
I’m not saying don’t have a plan. Have a plan, but use it as a reference, don’t work on it like its the project itself.
4. Plan the night before
Create a quick to-do/ check list the night before you set out to do it.
Also, take out your gym clothes and put it near your bed, tidy up your house so its nice and clean in the morning, and get your bag ready for work.
These things, while they may seem like small insignificant tasks, can actually make a world of difference. Let’s give you a quick scenario:
You’ve woken up, you’re still tired, you hardly had any sleep. You wanted to go to the gym but you can’t be bothered to go through your wardrobe and take everything out. You go to your living room to have a coffee. It’s in a right state. It irritates you, great you’re in a bad mood already. You get ready, you grab your bag, and just as you leave you realize you don’t have your notes for the important presentation. You go in, you get them, you get out. Then you remember you were supposed to bring in that file for your boss, you go in, you get them, you get out. Then…
You get the point right?
Related:
5 Steps To Control Stress When You’re About To Have A Meltdown
Productivity Hack: The 5-Minute Rule
5. Reuse old material/ templates
I call this the sneaky but smart tip from this list of productivity tips.
If you’re a content creator like a blogger or an Instagram influencer, refresh old material, templates, or backgrounds you previously used with new designs and hit publish.
This will save you heaps of time, and is a great way of getting work done efficiently.
Do you really think your viewers are going to remember that background that was behind a massive title from 6 months ago? I think not. So be smart, save time and go for it.
6. Limit distractions
You already know what I’m going to say. Put away your phone, set timed limits on your social media consumption, turn off your notifications and focus on the task ahead of you.
If you’re the type of person that gets distracted easily, try the Pomodoro technique or this 5-Minute rule. They’re both designed to keep your attention for short bursts of time in which you are completely focused.
7. Deep work & shallow work
Deep work is when you’re fully focused on the task at hand, and shallow work is tasks that require less concentration such as admin work.
From these two, you want to engage in more deep work than shallow work. Aim to have about four hours of deep work time per day and allot times throughout the day where you will be in this state. Routine is a great way to increase productivity as your body and mind become conditioned to behaving in a certain way at a certain time throughout the day.
8. Find the time you work best at
Time management tips are tips that are meant to help you. That doesn’t mean every single one will help, trial and error is the best way to figure out what’s best for you.
The first trial and error test you can try is to figure out what time of the day you are most productive. Are there any particular times of the day that you know you get a lot of work done? The most common is either early in the morning or late in the night.
If you’re unsure, use the next couple of days to figure out when is your most productive time. Once you have, start scheduling deep work tasks in that time.
9. Give yourself rewards
Life isn’t only about work, work, work. Even if you are passionate about reaching a goal, still take the time to appreciate the journey there and give yourself a pat on the back every time you’ve achieved something.
Have a mixture of small rewards and large rewards. This will give you something to look forward to while you’re working hard.
If you find it hard to balance between your ‘work’ and your ‘life,’ read this post on how to achieve work life balance.
10. Do the easy tasks last
This basically is all the shallow work. Aim to get all your deep work done as soon as possible, and then do the insignificant things like fixing your schedule or looking at your emails after.
In order to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time, you need to prioritize what is important and what is not, and also be smart about when you should do these tasks to make the most out of your time.
11. Learn to prioritize
This list of time management tips will be useless if you have no priorities and do work in whatever order whenever you want.
A similar trait between all these points is that all of them ensure that you do what is most important first and you cut out unimportant tasks, basically prioritizing.
12. Find your learning style
Gone are the days where you were forced by your teacher to learn in a specific way that they thought was good.
If you struggled in school, I personally don’t think that makes you unintelligent. It could be that you’re smart in another area of life apart from academics (maybe you like to work hands on rather than memorizing information?) or it could be that your teacher taught you in a way that didn’t help you understand.
Take some time out to figure out your learning style whether it be text-based, visual-based, audio-based etc. by doing some quizzes/ research online.
You weren’t born knowing everything therefore, you have to learn in order to grow and develop as a person. Identifying your learning style will speed up the process and help you learn what you need to faster.
13. Take regular breaks
You’re not a machine so don’t expect to work like one. Taking regular breaks will prevent you from experiencing dun, dun, DUN – burn out.
In comparison to breaks (that are spaced out and are a reasonable amount of time to relax and get back on work), burnouts can last like what feels like forever.
Taking breaks refreshes the mind so you’re ready to start again, while burnout is basically a period where you don’t want to think about work at all, or rather, can’t even think about work.
These productivity tips and time management techniques, when implemented together, do have the ability to make a few hours of time more useful than days of time.
Once you put these practices to work, it will amaze you how much work you can get done.
Were there any time management tips that I missed out that you think are really useful? Let’s talk in the comments!
