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10 Powerful Ways to Dramatically Boost Your Productivity, Guaranteed

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productivity tips

Note: This is a guest post by Henri Junttila from Wakeupcloud.com

By increasing your productivity you can not only got more done, but faster achieve your goals and make your wildest dreams come true.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

Most people never incorporate productive habits into their life, because they think what they have is good enough, but it never is.

Increasing your productivity is simple, but not the easiest task in the world. However, it’s worth it, because the more you can get done, the more time you can save while simultaneously making faster progress.
Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Okay, almost everyone.

1. Time Yourself

The best thing you can do to supercharge your brain is to set a timer before you start working.
Estimate how long it will take you to finish the task then set the timer for half the time. Challenge yourself and try to finish the task much faster than you think is possible.

If you do this, you will be pleasantly surprised that you can produce high-quality work in usually half the time.

2. Set Goals

One of the most important things the majority of people miss out on is setting goals. Setting goals is as easy as drawing a smiley face on paper.

However, there is a science setting goals. If you want effective goals, use the SMART criteria, which simply stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals.

If you’re unsure of how to do this, I suggest you grab a book on goal setting, or simply do a Google search.

3. Plan Ahead

Write down what you’re going to do tomorrow before you go to bed today.

This alone has tremendously improved my productivity, because it helps me visualize the next day’s tasks beforehand.
It’s easy to underestimate how much this can do for you, so try it out for a week and notice just how much your productivity increases.

4. Single-Task

We live in the age of distractions. We’re constantly bombarded with e-mails, Twitter, and Facebook. This is why it’s more important than ever before to focus on one single task at a time.

Each time you take your focus from say writing an article to checking your e-mail, you’re taking yourself out of the zone.
Every time you do this, it will take you 5 to 15 minutes to get back into it. Imagine the amount of time you save if you focus on one task in one task only until it’s done.

5. Batch

Do you have a lot of phone calls you need to make later today?
Batch them together to get them done faster. The same applies for everything else. If you’re writing a bunch of articles, line them up, outline them, and write them all as fast as you can.

You can always edit and tweak later. The main thing here is to batch things together to dramatically increase productivity in your life.

6. End Result

What are you trying to achieve? Most people never set goals, so they never know where they are going. They just keep working and hope that something good will happen.

When you know what you want to achieve, you can visualize it in your head, which provides positive feedback and motivation.

This will help you keep going, and will naturally boost your productivity, because it will make you feel good inside, which is never a bad thing.

7. Eat That Frog

Brian Tracy, who is famous for his personal development and sales material, says to eat that frog, which means to do the most difficult task on your to-do list for that day.

This is the task that you are most likely to put off and procrastinate on. Once you get it out of your way, you will feel much more empowered to take massive action and get the rest of your to-do list done.

8. Find Your Peak

When do you work best? Have you found that you feel inspired during the night, but sluggish during the morning?

Find your peak performance hours and increase not only the amount of work you get done, but the quality of your work.
I found that my peak hours change from time to time, so it always helps to tweak them and stay aware of your rhythm.

9. Eliminate Perfectionism

We all have that critical voice in our heads. It comes to writers as the editor. It blocks your creativity and makes your work hell.

Instead of focusing on making your work the best on the first try, try flipping that over and try making it as bad as you can.

This will condition you to get into the flow and eliminate that critical voice.

10. Find Your Passion

Last but definitely not least is the importance of finding and going after your passion. When you’re truly fire about something, it will be impossible for you not to take massive action.

When something makes your soul dance, you feel attracted to it, and you will produce massive results effortlessly.
It wasn’t until I found my passion that I started seeing incredible results in my life, and feeling significantly more fulfilled and happier.

You can do the same.

Henri writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his free course: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less. And if you liked this article, you will enjoy one of his top articles: 77 Great Quotes That Will Change Your Life.


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  • http://www.Mazzastick.com Justin | Mazzastick

    Henri,
    Setting goals and timing yourself is a great way to get to your destination faster. We all have goals but how long it takes to get there is up to us.

    Planning ahead is a good idea as well. I write my to do list on a yellow legal pad and leave it on my desk so that it is the first thing that I look at in the morning.

    I don’t even bother trying to be perfect anymore.

    • http://www.wakeupcloud.com/ Henri

      I do the exact same thing, but I use a white notebook.

      Get stuff done, throw perfection out the window, and make progress!

  • http://www.findallanswers.com Jane | Find All Answers

    Hi Henry,

    This one is a hit. It is completely true that boosting our productivity helps us achieve our wildest dreams in life. A plan and a goal are seriously a must to kick of things. A goal really defines the purpose and helps us to put forth our efforts in the right direction; otherwise we won’t have a target but will be simply working towards nothing.

    As regards to single tasking I agree with you, but most people won’t. Although multi-tasking has been proved to reduce productivity and increase time associated with performance, many people (including me sometimes) can’t help it and are addicted to it :)

    Cheers,
    Jane.

    • http://www.wakeupcloud.com/ Henri

      I couldn’t agree more, Jane.

      Multi-tasking is addicting. It makes us feel like we’re getting something done, but that’s never the case.

      Treacherous brain!

  • http://www.mynotetakingnerd.com Lewis LaLanne aka Nerd #2

    That timing yourself thing is a real eye-opener.

    Michael Masterson, the genius behind the info-product behemoth, Agora Publishing, just put out a book called “The Pledge” and it, he talks about how people waste something like 60 hours a year just standing in the shower.

    Yep. He says “Wasted” because he put a timer to it and figured out he could clean his whole body in 2 minutes. That’s how much time he gives himself to shower. And the book goes into much more detail about the ways people throw away the time of their life and then complain about not having enough time to do what it takes to succeed.

    Before I space out, the thing I wanted to point out about the timing strategy is to put a timer on the activities that you’re working on. After you’ve timed how long an activity will take, give yourself a set amount of time for how long you’ll take to finish it and race the clock.

    For example, I’ve given myself 10 minutes to write this comment. I’m at 3 minutes now and my mind knows it needs to wrap this up nice and neat so I can move on to my next project.

    Before I did this, it would’ve been easy for me to sit here and spend 30 minutes writing this letting all the junk fears of rejection, of being wrong, and of failing, force me to drag this process out. But with the deadline that I honor, all that stuff gets pushed aside.

    I hated this challenge at first but have grown to love it.

    • http://www.wakeupcloud.com/ Henri

      Timing definitely does help, although timing your showers may be taking it a bit too far in my world ;)

      -Henri

  • http://www.goalsontrack.com Jasmine @ GoalsOnTrack

    Thanks. This is a very good guide on productivity and goal setting.

  • Shane

    One problem I have with productivity is the decision making process. The tips above are very practical but how does one actually make the decision to do something. To me it doesn’t seem to be as simple as flipping a switch. The decision seems to come from somewhere deeper. Did you ever notice that the decision seems to be already made or not as the case may be before you actually consciously decide

    • http://www.wakeupcloud.com/ Henri

      Every process that you go through you have learned. So if your decision-making progress is stopping you from changing because you have to feel it coming from somewhere deeper, you may want to look at that. Where has it brought your life to this day?

      My process always begins with the conscious decision to implement something into my life, like one of the productivity tips above. The more I do it, the more it becomes a habit, and later a belief.

      -Henri

  • http://liferapture.com/ Benjamin

    Henri,

    Nice post. I have been using some of these techniques a lot recently, for example whenever I write a blog post I always give myself a 20-minute countdown to get the first draft written (usually in a distraction-free text editor. I then format and edit afterwards.

    Batching is also a favourite of mine. I batch everything, even making lunch for two-three days in advance. Just warming up a delicious lunch saves so much time in my day to get work done!

    I have been trying to single task as much as I can, but this is often difficult. I will make sure I do this more often.

    I have heard about the idea of writing down what you are going to do the next day many times, but I have never done it. At your suggestion I shall do it for this week.

    If I am not a millionaire by this time next week I will hold you fully responsible ;)

    Cheers man,
    Ben

    • http://www.wakeupcloud.com/ Henri

      Damn. Let me know if you aren’t a millionaire and I’ll give you my magic bullet which will definitely make you one. It’s very inexpensive ;)

      -Henri

  • http://deathrant.net Mike Radivis

    Ah, I want that productivity button! Where can I buy it? ;)

    Your post is really a very useful summary of really helpful ideas. I’ve already implemented many of them, but I still have difficulties with “eating that frog”. Ah, well, I’m not totally hopeless as I always set a daily challenge for the next day and reward myself with points for completing it. It feels great achieving a new weekly highscore :)

    Oh, and I definitely need to time myself more. Sometimes I feel a bit too sluggish.

  • http://www.mostlymaths.net Ruben Berenguel

    Hi Henri,

    my best productivity hack is using timeboxing techniques … They are always a boon to my productivity although I’m not constant enough in doing it daily, let’s see if I can manage to do it in May. I always struggle to keep on being productive after a productive day, I feel like “I’ve already done a lot”. A big problem! Any solution?

    Cheers,

    Ruben

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RFKWB3QESZHUQL65VCADSWNB44 Lisa Pater

    Henri, thanks for the tips. I’ve been using some of them, yet some are still difficult for me (e.g. avoid perfectionism and my critical inside voice). The thing I liked most was about the frog, especially when this frog is time-consuming.
    Personally, I hate when I know that my clock is running as fool and I’m not able to catch up.
    This problem was solved once I started sing time tracker (http://onepageonly.net/ ).
    Now, I just click on start at the beginning, if I have a break I can stop it and resume afterwards. Then, in summary, I see how many hours I spent on each task. As I have different projects and tasks, this tool enables me to switch between them and at last I have an order in my working schedule :)

  • http://elevationlife.com Bryan Thompson

    I love these 10 rules. I saw a video by Jack Canfield a few years ago in which he said to plan your entire day the night before. To set the appointment times like you mentioned and to actually plan how your meetings will go the next day. Picture them the way you imagine they should go. Something happens to your subconscious mind as you sleep and it will work out the details and your mannerisms before you wake up. These are ten more I’ll get to work on right away. Thanks Henri!

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