How to improve your overall productivity and take complete charge of your life? What holds you back? What stops you to fill the gap between what you want to do and what you actually end up doing?
With so much pressure at the workplace, so many expectations at home, and even more life goals that we set for ourselves every passing year, it becomes hard to meet all the deadlines. It drains out the little energy we have to accomplish a task and leads us to a guilt-trip and self-doubt many times.
How to improve your overall productivity to thrive at your workplace, your household chores, and at a personal level? In this blog, I am going to share a few tried and tested ways that can help you overcome these obstacles.
How To Improve Your Overall Productivity:12 Incredible Ways
So the way you are working on yourself isn’t working anymore, right? Things are not falling at the place as you planned them and also you are not feeling happy about anything you do, no matter how much effort you put, it goes all down the drain. What to do now?
We all want to be successful in our life and we try hard to make things work in our own ways. Every now and then, people ask me how I manage my work along with my family. How I am active at so many places, how do I even manage things, do I have a team or do I manage things on my own?
Like many working professionals, even I had my set of problems and priorities to manage things, that perfect work-life balance dilemma, it is just that I took some time out to reflect and evaluate myself based upon the things that matter and reframed my working style. Here are a few very-well received techniques and the most effective ways to help you improve your overall productivity.
| 1.) Pareto Principle |
| 2.) Pomodoro Technique |
| 3.) Perspective expansion |
| 4.) Eating the Frog |
| 5.) Decluttering |
| 6.) Prioritizing |
| 7.) Don’t sleep on your ideas |
| 8.) Doomscrolling |
| 9.) Setting unrealistic goals |
| 10.) Impatience |
| 11.) Multitasking |
| 12.) Hindrance to change |
1.) Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle, named after esteemed economist Vilfredo Pareto, is also known as the 80-20 rule. It specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.
This principle serves as a general reminder that the relationship between inputs and outputs is not balanced. In the 80-20 rule, you prioritize the 20% of factors that will produce the best results. A principle of the 80-20 rule is to identify an entity’s best assets and use them efficiently to create maximum value.
2.) Pomodoro Technique
How to improve your overall productivity? A handy tip could be to work with self-discipline. Using the Pomodoro technique where you work in blocks of time eliminating any sort of distraction. It consists of 6 steps:
Choose a task you’d like to get done.
Set the Pomodoro for 25 minutes.
Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings.
When the Pomodoro rings, put a checkmark on a paper.
Take a short break.
Every 4 Pomodoro, take a longer break.
If you imbibe it in your attitude that work from home is the same as it is in an office environment. You will get the same optimum results as you were getting in an office environment.
3.) Perspective expansion
We all get equal opportunities, every day 24 hours gets deposited in our bank account. Now it is completely in our hands to make the optimum use of it. How about looking at like this, by having a perspective expansion, now see these 24 hours a day as 168 hours a week. Doesn’t it relax your tensed muscles?
Having a little shift in perspective helps you ease as it opens the gate for other possibilities and allows you to move out of a rigid space you have created for yourself, as you stop exploring and follow the predominant way of working.
4.) Eating the Frog
Well, not literally! But if you have read the book, ‘Eat That Frog‘, you will know how Author Brian Tracy shares 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time and helps you to walk the road to be more productive and not fall for the technology and being a slave of it.
Make it work for you, procrastination is the time thief, do not hand over the keys to its hands.
5.) Decluttering
When you declutter, you make room for quality things. You can start by decluttering the stuff you have been hoarding for a long-time that doesn’t spark any joy in your life. You can declutter memories and habits that have been a barrier to your own growth.
Sit with yourself and make a list of things you need and you should not need in and around you, you will come out rejuvenated, trust me.
6.) Prioritizing
Decluttering and prioritizing go hand in hand, while you sit with your self and declutter, you also make room to prioritize. Prioritizing helps you to organize your day through your thoughts. It helps you to number out the tasks in their order of importance. I feel one should not pick up more than five tasks daily, being cautious about the mental wellness part here, no overstretching.
When you make a list, prioritize those five items in order of their true importance. By dedicatedly prioritizing your tasks, you will be able to strike-out the least important task making more room for a productive day.
7.) Don’t sleep on your ideas
Indian philosopher Swami Vivekananda has rightly quoted, “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
I follow this whole-heartedly. If you have an idea just don’t sit on it, in this fast-moving world one day you will see someone else doing what you wanted to do and would be able to do nothing about it but regret it, we don’t want that, do we?
8.) Doomscrolling
Oh yes! That infinite web-browsing, binge scrolling the internet. You will lose your precious hours and in the end, if you think, what were you actually doing, you will get no answer. Time out!
Of course, we have to use the internet but at the same time, we have to keep on reminding ourselves about the precious time we are losing while going through the content that is not at all helpful. Value your time.
9.) Setting unrealistic goals
We have this habit of setting goals every new year, no it is not at all compulsory to have a bucket list or a wish list of 10-20 things. You can have ONE goal and make sure it is achievable, quantifiable, and realistic enough.
How to improve your overall productivity? Imagine your goal, imagine how it will make you feel once you accomplish it, imagine the external and internal factors surrounding your goal, when you are done evaluating, godspeed!
10.) Impatience
If patience is the key, impatience is the lock that blocks your productivity. How to improve your overall productivity? By being patient with your aspirations and daily tasks you perform, be it at home or office. Things take time to shape up, it will take time, it will go through the process it is supposed to be, you cannot just jump straight to chapter 19, you have to read the first 18 chapters.
11.) Multitasking
Being good at multitasking sometimes comes naturally but just to serve everyone and be there for everyone, if you are stressing yourself, it will brutally hamper your productivity in the long run.
That glorified image of a woman who does dozens of tasks together looks nice but in practicality, if you will continue to do so, you will lose your essence, you will lose you me-time, your good mental health, your physical health, and your overall productivity. because you will be under pressure to meet the set benchmark by you almost every time.
12.) Hindrance to change
Our overall productivity increases or decreases when our output in the terms of good relationships, a well-balanced life, work-life balance, or satisfying job gets affected. It is when we are rigid and unwelcome about a change and do not want to expand our horizon.
Like I mentioned in the above point no.3, a little shift in perspective helps. When you disassociate yourself and see things you might consider a change in your style, you might see how a change can be fruitful and productive in many ways. All you have to do is follow your instincts and listen to your inner voice.
To conclude, I would say that sleeping on a productive day is far better than sleeping on your anxious thoughts, procrastination, and your own limiting beliefs. How to improve your overall productivity and take charge of yourself? Come out of the cocoon, explore different options, make things work by being a little stubborn and adamant when it comes to things you believe in. You will be super-productive and you will be unstoppable. Rise Up!
Love and Light!
Priyanka Nair is the author of 26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier you and Ardhaviram. An NLP practitioner and Founder of Sanity Daily, helping you prioritize your mental health. Let’s build a happy community.
