Every time a new year rolls by, people start making their ‘new year resolutions,’ the goals they hope to accomplish that year. But, making a list of goals is the easy part. Achieving the said goals and being as productive as you can be, on the other hand, is the tricky bit. This explains why people often struggle with their resolutions or abandon before the end of the first month of the year.
But this does not have to be your story this year. With our help, you can set your goals and be your most productive self this year. Here is how:
Prioritize everything
If you want to get things done in time, you need to prioritize, make a ‘to-do’ or task list. On your list, make sure that you have your tasks arranged according to their order of importance. Find the most pressing things or those with the closest deadlines and put them on top of the list. Creating a list like this helps you spot tasks with their importance level low enough to be edited out of your list. With a task list in place, you can see what needs to be done – from the most urgent to the least pressing.
Pinpoint your obstacles
When making a plan to be more productive, it helps to figure out any hindrances – whatever seems to be holding you back. Could it be distractions? Lack of prioritization? Inability to focus? To figure out what’s holding you back, you need to be completely honest with yourself, that way you can know the next step to take. Once you figure out your major obstacles, the next thing is to get rid of them. If you’re successful in doing this, there’s nothing keeping you from taking the next step.
Create a routine
Sometimes, even after prioritizing, it could still feel like you have too much on your plate. In a situation like this, the most effective solution is to create a routine for yourself. Setting up a daily routine can help you plan and sort out the tasks to be carried out each day. This helps you work faster rather than slowing yourself down by trying to figure out the first task to carry out and the order you should follow. With a routine, you can split up all you have to do into different hours of the day in a way that’s convenient for you.
Set deadlines
A great to increase productivity is to set deadlines. Nothing ever gets accomplished on time if you don’t have a strict deadline to meet up with. Deadlines help you keep to a specific task at hand that needs to be completed and narrows down your focus. This coupled with prioritization will have you finish up with your tasks in a shorter period.
Blot out distractions
The first step in clearing out distractions is by gathering the activities included in your day that have little to no importance. For instance, if you watch TV a lot, or you spend too much time on social media, you can cut back on them. Scrolling through your Instagram page for example can take you about 2 hours if you keep going at it, this is simply because it never ends – it’s a huge platform with new posts that keep coming in. You have to find a way to shove these excesses that don’t contribute to your productivity into a space where they can’t interfere with your important activities.
Measure your progress and go easy on yourself
It’s quite natural to have situations where you try to do something but you fail, you can’t restrict yourself to winning all the time because some things just don’t work out. Change is constant but can sometimes be difficult, if not a little overwhelming. When things don’t work out for you on the first try, it’s okay, what’s important is that you don’t get stuck on your failure and stop trying. If you’re unable to get over failures, you will be unable to move forward. A good trick to counter your failures is by measuring your progress- how well you’ve come so far. Doing this encourages you to keep trying until you can reach your highest level of productivity.
Set up a pace for yourself
Aside from deadlines, another way of increasing your productivity is deadlines. They may sound alike but have different functions. Deadlines solely focus on your timing and the turnout speed while pacing has more to do with the speed or pace you set for yourself. When introducing yourself to a newly developed plan, it doesn’t help to rush into things, this can tire you out and overwhelm you before you achieve anything tangible at all. It’s much easier to begin at a subtle pace to help you familiarise yourself with how your routine is going to be. As time goes on, you can keep increasing your pace because you already know how to go about your routine and it’s no big deal making adjustments or accommodating something new.
Remain focused
Staying focused through the entire process is the most important thing when trying to be more productive. Focus most times has to do with your personality, you have to know your strengths- where and when do you work best? You have to figure out the environment that evokes the greatest sense of focus within you and note the time of the day that you concentrate best. If you can remain focused through the entire process, you can be more productive.
All in all, you have to figure out what works for you and inculcate them into your daily habits. That coupled with these steps will help you get as productive as you can be.