Boost Your Productivity

Productivity is a must for any organisation.

To assist you in giving it the attention it requires, there is a surge of productivity software and ideas that you may utilise. The following productivity tactics will make a huge difference in whatever sector you work in, whether you want to be certain you have everything you need on your side.

When you put one, two, or more of these methods into practice, you will not feel as if you could have worked longer.

You won’t feel as if you’ve wasted your day or are lacking in some way. Rather, you’ll feel satisfied and complete with everything you’ve achieved.

The average employee in the United Kingdom was found to be productive for around three hours per day. A survey of over 2,000 office employees in the U.K. revealed that the typical worker was operational for about two hours and fifty three minutes  each day.

That’s not very much, is it?

That is why we chose to interview company owners and freelancers regarding their productivity hacks!

1. Hunter Branch

Hunter Branch

Batch work based on your natural rhythms

As a marketer working on 100s of projects seemingly at the same time, I struggled to be efficient until I started batching and scheduling my work for the most advantageous time of day. For instance, I am most creative in the early morning, so all of my writing and strategic tasks are done then. I don’t reply to emails, look at notifications, or think about anything else during this block. Once I hit the afternoon lull, I move to less intensive tasks like responding to emails. The combination of utilising hours of my best energy for creative tasks, blocking out distractions, and handling less intensive tasks later has helped me get a full day’s work done in 4-6 hours. I heard this advice for years before implementing it. It seemed too strict and limiting. But once I finally caved and made it a habit, my productivity soared and my workday was more “free” than ever.

2. Radoslav Chakarov

Radoslav Chakarov

Avoid multitasking to become more effective

I used to think so very highly of anyone who prided themselves on multitasking. The fact that I had to switch focus from one thing to another, then another within minutes was just very stressful.

I would start several things at once and not finish them, so after a lot of frustration I changed strategies. Now I focus on one thing at a time and I give that one task my undivided attention. 

Multitasking was slowing me down which was affecting all of my deadlines. Doing too many things at once gives you a false sense of efficiency. Once I stopped, my performance improved, I was less anxious and stressed, and I was completing my projects on time. 

3. Hasan Abir

Hasan Abir

Sound and Clear Break Management

No matter how busy you are, you never forget to take a regular break. A short break with the Pomodoro technique will help you to break work up into short periods. This break refreshes your mind, allowing you to stay focused on your work.

However, you should not spend your break time on social media. Using social media over the break can mentally distract you by exposing you to negativity.

You may get the most out of your breaks by engaging in activities that refresh your body and mind. During your break, you can do short workouts like cardio, bodyweight squats etc. 

4. Henry Cazalet

Henry Cazalet

Save time and reduce errors by using a text expander

Do you find yourself typing the same copy time and time again but with minor variations? A text expander allows you to summon up common passages of texts in just a few keystrokes.

You can store unlimited snippets of text of any length and then insert them into your writing with pre-set keystrokes. Many of the text expanders also have Chrome extensions which make using them pretty seamless.

So whether you’re writing emails or sales documents you can save acres of time that can be used more productively on something else.

5. Nikola Roza

Nikola Roza

Have a morning routine that works for you

Morning routines are all the craze nowadays, and with good reason. They work. But the common mistake people make is adopting verbatim a morning routine of a famous successful person, and wondering why it doesn’t work for them as advertised. 

The thing is that just as people differ, so do their ideal morning routines.

So, deciding to have a morning routine is just the first step, the second one is experimenting to see what works best for you. This step takes months when done right, but the results are superb and long lasting.

6. Crispino Santamaria

Crispino Santamaria

Hire a Virtual Assistant

Learn to delegate when tasks start piling up. It is easy to do everything by yourself to save money, but when you want to scale your business it is better to seek help.

A good example of this is to hire a freelancer or virtual assistant for website maintenance or other routine tasks.

Their skills and experience can help you keep your site running smoothly so that you can focus on growing your business.

So if you are looking to scale up, consider hiring a virtual assistant today!

Your position and Your Company name: Social Media Manager

7. Maryna Postrelko 

maryna postrelko

Implement Agile Planning To Complete Projects Efficiently

Presently, we operate in such a fast-paced business environment that makes our daily work demanding and sometimes even a bit chaotic. Tons of emails, hours of unproductive team meetings, and numerous slides to prepare compelling plans have become our new reality. 

To avoid burning out, utilise an agile methodology in your planning. 

In a nutshell, this means following these recommendations:

  1. Instead of developing in-depth long-term plans (one year), divide them into short-term iterations (3 months), known as releases. Describe the list of outcomes for each.
  2. Further, split the 3-months release into shorter time periods named sprints. Here is a good place to start doing a detailed plan, so answer such questions as what should be delivered in the upcoming sprint? Who is responsible for the particular tasks? Do I need to outsource, or can I cope in-house?
  3. Implement daily meetings with your team to discuss the agenda. What was done yesterday? What is the plan for today? Are there any blockers?

This approach will help you avoid stress, work under pressure, and focus on crucial tasks.

8. Peter Kariuki 

Peter Kariuki

Systematise your routine tasks

To be more productive, you must systematise the details of your everyday activities. As a result of doing so, you will become more efficient and save time in the long run.

Here are a good tip on how to systematise your routine tasks:

Because your brain works more effectively when moving between similar activities than it does when changing tasks, group similar operations together.

Tasks, inquiries, and meetings can all be managed together.

9. Norv Leong

Norv Leong

Let you be you without roadblocks

Always in high demand, technical folks are in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose their next landing spot. But what makes them happy as they evaluate their options? 

First and foremost, many engineers just want to design and build (get s**t done). And to do that, they need access to the tools they’re accustomed to using or, even better, the ones they prefer using. Engineers like to move fast and be as productive as possible, so when they need quick access to a database or server to check in some code, they don’t like anything or anybody standing in their way.

So, keep your technical staff happy and productive by giving them easy access to the crucial tools they need to write, test, and check in code so that the company as a whole can innovate and stay ahead of the competition.

10. Ilija Sekulov

Ilija Sekulov

Set SMART goals

You can feed your passion by setting smarter and fewer goals overall.

What are SMART goals? These are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals. Setting smart goals can fuel your passion. Then, eliminate the tasks that don’t match your goals.

When you set just a few challenging goals, they stay at the top of your mind, so you’ll be more likely to find a way to achieve them. This can give rise to the flywheel effect. The example of a heavy Ferris wheel at rest illustrates that it can be difficult to get it to move at first. However, by continuing to throw yourself into the same handful of objectives, you will gain more momentum. As soon as the speed increases, nothing can stop the flywheel.

11. Gaurav Sharma

Gaurav Sharma

Shutting off the Distractions on Social Media

As a digital marketer, I’ve got to remain active on major social media platforms. But alas, the infinite scrolls can get even the best of us. Don’t even get me started on the barrage of notifications! Productivity took a major hit due to these reasons. 

That’s when I discovered various browser extensions that helped block out newsfeeds, likes, comments, and other distractions. This allowed me to concentrate on what I’ve come to social media to do — help my clients grow their businesses. Blocking out irrelevant content also meant that I had time to devote to other more important tasks.

12. Axel Levergne

Axel Levergne

Leverage browser automations

Automation is one of those things where it’s all or nothing. 

But that doesn’t have to be. Cloud-based automation over-complexifies even the most basic workflows. But web browsers can literally automate anything you do on them. And these days, that’s a lot.

The most straightforward example is web scraping. Bypassing security requires heavy infrastructure and pretty advanced knowledge, while scraping what your browser spits out really is as simple as it sounds.

Transferring data from one environment to another is another great example. A simple copy paste can easily become a massively complex data flow.

There are millions of browser extensions on the market to fix very simple, straightforward use cases, and most are free.

And if you have some notion of javascript, get in the habit of using the browser console or google scripts to automate repetitive tasks.

13. Konrad Caban

Konrad Caban

8 Proven Productivity Tips that Do Work for Me

  1. Never use the nap button in your alarm clock. Turn off that option totally if you have that option.
  2. Don’t be a low spender when buying your mattress or office chair.
  3. Use asynchronous communication (email, collaboration tools) more than synchronous one (calls, meetings).
  4. Automate as much as you can (phone rules, email rules, integrate with IFTT/Zapier, etc.)
  5. Train your brain by playing games, but don’t rely on your memory and write down everything.
  6. Use any “read it later” tool, but set a day and time once a week to read things from the list. Otherwise your list would grow huge.
  7. If you work far from home, consider taking a train/bus/cab instead of driving. You could use your commuting time productively.
  8. Align your working time to your personality type. Don’t push yourself to work in the morning if you’re an owl person.

14. Elizabeth Nelson 

Elizabeth Nelson

Exercise your body and your brain

I set a timer on my phone every hour and a half and step outside for a fifteen minute hike or do push-ups and jumping jacks. This helps my brain wake up and boosts my serotonin to make me happier and more productive.

Most people know that physical activity is good for the body. However, many people don’t realise that exercise is also one of the best things you can do for your brain. 

Exercise has been shown to improve brain function in a variety of ways, including improving memory and cognitive function. 

15. Raisa Yogiaman

Raisa Yogiaman

Apply Block Schedule System

When we were in school, we managed to learn 4-5 different subjects in a day. Now we are adults, switching from one task to another seems to be a daunting process. What has changed?

To boost my productivity, I use the Block Schedule System. It helps me to get things done without burnout, improve my time management, and allow me to concentrate on one task at a time.

The idea is simple: I block my days into chunks and assign each piece to one main task. For example, at 9-10 for replying to emails, 10-13 for editing content, 14-16 for uploading blogs, and 16-18 for dealing with less stressful tasks.

If you don’t finish your task within the block, move on to the next one. Continue the to-dos from the unfinished block tomorrow. 

16. Victor Ijidola

Victor Ijidola

Quiet your mind and cut distractions

Today’s world is so full of noise, and it’s super hard to be productive if my mind is filled with all that noise. 

What I do to combat it is to spend some time in the morning to just meditate and praying. It helps calm my mind and gets me all ready for the day.

However, I usually still have to block my mind from so much noise trying to get in throughout the day – noise from social media, phone apps, news, etc. 

I simply try to not pay attention to them. I permanently remove unnecessary notifications from my phone and computer; that helps a whole lot. And I’ve just recently heard about an app called StayFocused. I might be installing it soon – as I hear it helps to block noise and helps you stay focused.

17. Max Babych

Max Babych

Involvement of Work without Micromanagement

As the founder or leader of a small team, you may want to constantly check on progress and ask for updates to make sure everything is going according to plan. Avoid this.

Hovering over your employees’ shoulders, even virtually, can lead to lower productivity and make employees feel like you don’t trust them to complete their tasks.

Clearly explain what is expected of them and then let them handle it. You can step in if there are problems or persistent delays. Otherwise, trust your workers to get the job done. Avoiding micromanagement will help increase productivity not only for you but also for your team.

18. Cadi Silla

Cadi Silla

Implement cybersecurity in your business

Keeping your system virus-free will help increase your productivity and profitability.

Cyberattacks can both slow down your system and steal the data on your computers which leads to reducing the speed of ongoing operations. The reason is that your team would be involved in unwanted processes such as restoring the stolen or damaged data and fixing the relevant issues caused by the cyberattacks.

With the correct and proper precautions, it is possible for you and your team members to eliminate these roadblocks and increase their productivity by spending time on profitable tasks.

In addition, since online businesses deal with online financial activities, a cybersecurity strategy can minimise the threats associated with financial transactions. You must be aware that a data breach can bring your business to a halt that can cause irrecoverable results such as losing revenue, customer distrust, etc.

19. James Clear

James Clear

To be highly effective, single handle all tasks

Make a timetable and focus on one aspect of the job at a time until it is finished. Only then may you proceed to the following portion of your task.

A single handle manages everything you need to get done on your timetable. That implies that, once you start working on a project, you continue working at it until it’s completely completed.

That way you won’t be wasting time trying to remember what you were doing or repeating work because you forgot something. This can also aid in your attention, allowing you to complete the job faster and more effectively.

If you’re working on a project plan, for example, don’t start writing the executive summary until after you’ve finished the rest of the project plan.

20. Ali Ali

Ali Ali

Use a site blocker

One of the best hacks I’ve used to carve out focused time is to use a site blocker. There are numerous site blockers and extensions you can use to block out specific sites when you are working. 

This makes it difficult for you to access these sites when you are doing deep work. 

The vast majority of these tools are free and some offer paid plans to have additional features. 

Conclusion

You’ve undoubtedly heard the saying “work smarter, not harder.” It’s a good idea, and most successful people in the world have embraced it.

They realise how essential it is to optimise productivity while still saving time.

Hopefully, after reading this collection of time-saving techniques, you’ll be able to function a bit more efficiently. It’s also critical to remember that if you want to get more productive, you must be prepared to change.

Good luck in all of your endeavours this year, and make it the most productive on record.

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