How To Be More Productive (7 Powerful Productivity Ideas)

So, How to be more productive? Let’s find out….

There’s that guy at your place of work that seems to be everyone’s favorite; in fact, the boss also loves him.

He appears as if he has gotten the hang of everything, and he’s so good that he keeps getting all things done easily and fast.

Some way, somehow, he’s able to wrap up a 40 minutes work in 15 minutes.

And now, everyone is starting to describe him as a robot because doing work productively like that isn’t common with humans.

So, how his he able to do this? How is he able to be more productive than anybody else? Can you also be as productive as he is?

Well, welcome to Thriven Authority and in today’s topic, we’ll be enlightening you on how to be more productive than you’ve ever been.

First, that guy in your work place isn’t a robot.

And becoming as productive as he is, is very possible…you just have to follow certain tips used by productive people.

Now, here’s how you can be more productive. 

Tip Number One: Focus On MIT’s First

I know you might be saying… “wait, what! I don’t even go to MIT!”

But don’t get it confused because the MIT here isn’t a university but your most important tasks.

With the breaking of every new day comes a new set of tasks and activities we need to complete.

There’s a probability you haven’t finished that of yesterday which means you now have a mix of important and unimportant tasks from two different days.

And according to a study made by professor Masicampo and Baumeister of Wake Forest University, tasks we haven’t done will distract us but making a plan to get them done can free us from this anxiety.

This means, rather than having to deal with the confusion that might come with such a situation, it’s better you create a to-do list of all your tasks ordered from the most important task to the least important.

By checking off your most important tasks first, you get to do more difficult tasks in a shorter period.

This method of focus on your MITs also helps in eliminating procrastination.

But if you find yourself procrastinating already and don’t know how to stop it… then you should check out our video on how to stop procrastination.

Tip Number Two: Keep A Distraction List

You might be wondering… “why i need to make a list of the things that keep me ditracted?”

The answer to that is simple.

A distraction list is like a to-do list for distractions.

It’s a list of those things that come to your mind during the periods you’re trying to stay focused.

With everything social increasing in numbers daily, getting distracted from what you truly need to do keeps getting easier.

Distractions are not just fun stuff, sometimes, they are also very important but not as important as what you are currently doing.

Replying your mum’s message on WhatsApp is important but not as important as having to fill out the ledger your boss ordered you to.

If you say replaying takes just a minute and you head over to WhatsApp, you might end up getting hooked by other people’s status updates.

A study made in the University of California was able to calculate that it takes an average of 25 minutes 26 seconds to get back to work after an interruption.

Instead of waste such optimal time, just write that distraction in a list so you don’t forget and then you can attend to it later.

Tips Number Three: Break Down Large Tasks

If you’ve seen our video on how to stop procrastination, then you definitely know by now that the brain doesn’t like difficult or large tasks.

The human brain was designed to save us from stress and pain.

Doing a difficult or large task involves you using more man and brain power and in-turn, getting stressed.

Your brain therefore tends to make you postpone such task for later.

To prevent this, you need to give you brain a reason to keep going.

A study conducted on 157 participants who participated in a brain-training game showed that positive feedback from the game created long-term motivation in the participants.

This means, if you do deliver your brain with regular feedbacks and progress, you tend to work even more.

Therefore, breaking down your large tasks into smaller processes will help you stay motivated and more productive.

Tip Number Four: Don’t Forget The 80/20 Rule

It is very important that when talking about productivity, we include the 80/20 rule as it is a building block of time and attention management.

This rule was discovered by Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and it is sometimes referred to as the Pareto Principle.

According to the 80/20 rules, in any life pursuit, 20% of the efforts put in will amount to 80% of the results that would be derived.

This means, to improve your efficiency and be more productive, you need to figure out the most important 20% of your task and then find ways to break down the other 80% of your schedule.

In fact, a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review discovered that 90% of managers through poor time management, wasted valuable time.

Instead of finding the important 20% and then breaking down the remaining 80%, they wasted time executing the activities that will deliver the least result.

To be more productive, schedule your tasks based on the 80/20 rule.

Tip Number Five: Learn To Take Little Breaks

Irrespective of how productive an individual might be, having to stay focused for up to eight hours straight is a difficult feat.

You can keep cultivating a habit of staying focused but maintaining a distraction-free focus for such a long time is impossible.

This means, to maintain being productive, you need to take breaks sometimes.

A survey conducted by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic showed that workers who utilized programs that reminded them of taking breaks did 13% better work than those who didn’t.

Invariably, taking an ideal break of 5 minutes after a 25 minutes work is a friend of productivity.

Tip Number Six: Automate Possible Tasks

Sometimes, a task you need to complete today is the same thing as what you completed a few days ago with just little changes.

All you need to do in such a case is to change a few parameters and repeat the process. This is one part of automation.

Automation can also be as simple as keyboard shortcuts, or complex as web scraping.

A 2019 research made by students from the University Sultan Zainal Abidin showed that automation does just reduce workload, it also reduces error thereby allowing more work to be done.

To be more productive, try to make use of automation technologies that will autocomplete certain processes for you. This is one of the biggest secrets of every productive individual.

Tip Number Seven: Avoid Multi-tasking

Multi-tasking is something everyone tries to implement in their everyday lives.

However, as good as it may seem, the disadvantage is what stands out the most.

Though multi-tasking is popularly defined as doing two or more things at a time, the contrary is what’s happening.

When you multi-task, you are rapidly switching focus between two things but when you switch from one to the other, it would take a few minutes for your mind to reconcile with the task again.

Repeating this for a over and over amounts to several minutes of lost time.

In fact, a research on multitasking published on the American Psychological Association concludes that most people are bad at multi-tasking and it’s better not to practice it all.

Simply put, if you want to be more productive, don’t multi-task.

And that’s it! Practice these tips and you will be the next popular guy of the office.

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