Today I’d like to share with you my top 5 productivity hacks and tips that changed my life. Let’s get started!
Here is my best trick to overcome procrastination in the morning: Try to start your day doing something fun and/or treat yourself.
Choose an activity you love and really enjoy doing, do it the first thing in the morning, and see what happens. In my case the vision of delicious coffee and a half-hour-long session with a book or meditation makes me feel a huge motivation wave to get up from the bed. After that kind of pleasure, I have more energy to struggle with challenging tasks I planned for the rest of my day.
This rule is LIFE-CHANGING advice I read in a wonderful book Getting Things Done by David Allen. He is a productivity consultant and a master of time management. I highly recommend becoming acquainted with his bestselling book and time management method. But for now, I’d like to focus on this simple 2-minute rule:
If something requires less than 2 minutes of your time – do it now.
The general purpose is to make it easier for you to identify the closest actions you can do and get started doing things RIGHT NOW. The common issue with most of the tasks is that they seem very difficult and sometimes almost impossible to accomplish in your head. But in reality, you already have all the required resources and skills to fulfill them. The 2 Minute Rule motivates you to take care of your stuff step by step, action by action.
Some time ago I was using one planner to write down everything. I wrote countless to-do lists for every day, my projects and tasks related to projects, important notes, my ideas, etc. My planner was totally overloaded.
So I decided to set up a second organizer. Now I have two planners – one for my projects, ideas, wish lists, and goals. And second for scheduled tasks and appointments that must be completed within the specified time.
This is another brilliant idea I found in David Allen’s Getting Things Done book. His advice is to create to-do lists categorized by places where the action can be done, or what tools you need to perform it. For example, You need a new pair of shoes and you would like to buy them in a local store. You can create a special to-do list called City and write down a position Buy a new pair of shoes in …. store.
You can draw up lists such as:
Next, you can write all of your tasks (next actions to do) and assign them to adequate to-do lists, for example:
In my opinion, good habits are crucial for our efficient work and getting things done. And with that in mind breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones is a key to have an organized, peaceful, and settled life.
A habit tracker could be a useful tool for developing new habits. It allows you to follow your progress day by day.
Last but not least, I have a little gift for you. I designed a beautiful printable planner with monthly and weekly planning templates, to-do lists, and habit trackers. You can download this planner in pdf from my shop.
I hope you will find this post interesting, informative, and useful in making your life more organized! Maybe you have some organizing tips you want to share?
Love, M.
