If you want to become more productive, it helps to understand how productive people think.
Even if this way of thinking doesn’t come naturally to you, you can adopt and apply these principles to your work life and daily life.
Since applying most of these principles to my daily life, I am much more productive. Go ahead and give them a try.
Get clear about your priorities.
People who are the most productive are clear about their priorities. They know that some things are more important than others and can attack the most important things first.
If this isn’t your usual habit, start each day by making a list of tasks and placing them in order of priority.
This will help you to get the most important things done first and even help you to drop tasks that aren’t necessary.
Understanding priorities also makes it easy to delegate tasks and avoid things that might take away from reaching goals.
Plan
Productive people generally make a plan. They may schedule their next day at the end of the current workday. This makes it easy to jump right into work the next day without taking time to decide what’s next on the list.
Proverbs 14:23 Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!
Put time wasters on the back burner. Many things throughout the day could threaten to take away from your productivity. Productive people know how to put those time-wasters on the back burner and stick to the vital work.
It could be social media, chatty coworkers, emails, text messages, phone calls, or reading online news that prevents you from getting business done. Set those things aside and schedule a specific time when you’ll allow yourself to participate.
Be responsible for failure and success.
Productive people are happy to take responsibility for their successes and failures.
Rather than looking to point the finger at someone else, they make sure to stay accountable for their work.
Mistakes are learning tools. When you’re working to be more productive, it helps to understand that mistakes are learning tools.
Productive people are aware that they will make mistakes, but they look to learn from them instead of letting mistakes throw them off course or cause them to quit.
Useful tools. Productive people also know it’s essential to have the right tools to do the job. That means having a high-quality computer, the proper software, and even the correct desk setup.
When you have what you need in your workspace, it helps you to get more done.
Think about your productivity levels. Where can you make changes in your mindset to become more productive? Small changes can lead to significant results.
Establishing Work Priorities
One of the best ways to improve your productivity is to prioritize your work. But if you’re new to goal setting and time management, it can be tough to know how to do this.
Read on for tips on prioritizing your work and getting the most out of your time.
“Know what matters most to you and be unwilling to compromise those priorities at almost any price.” – Frank Sonnenberg-
The first thing you should do is make a list of everything that needs to get done.
This includes tasks for clients, tasks for yourself, and other tasks that need to get done to further your work.
Exhaust every piece of work you think you need to do.
Decide What’s Time-Sensitive.
Some tasks need to be done urgently, while others aren’t as time-sensitive. Take the list you brainstormed and divide the tasks into two categories – urgent vs. not urgent.
Urgent things are those that are related to deadlines.
Decide what’s Important. In addition to knowing what’s essential time-wise, it’s also important to look at the importance of each task.
A task is crucial if it supports the overall vision of your business and supports bigger goals and priorities.
Some tasks are not as essential but need to get done. And you may even find some tasks aren’t that important and can be removed from the list.
Rank both the urgent and not urgent lists by importance.
Understand Your Limits. You can become overwhelmed if you give yourself an unrealistic number of tasks to complete. Be realistic about what you can do in a given amount of time.
Overloading your to-do list can cause you to become paralyzed and get less done.
Set Time Limits for Tasks.
If you tend to spend too much time on a task seeking perfection, you need to give yourself time limits so that you won’t focus on one thing for too long while neglecting other tasks.
That may mean throwing some of your perfectionism out the window.
Set Deadlines. When you feel like you have all the time in the world to complete a project, you’re less likely to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
Set deadlines so you can be motivated to finish in less time and get more done.
Save Time for Personal Projects.
Sometimes you’ll find there are things you want to do for your business that isn’t necessarily critical at the time.
Don’t forget to give yourself the time to work on projects you enjoy. When you feel fulfilled and happy, you’ll be more productive.
When you learn to prioritize your work, you’ll know which tasks need to be done right away and which can wait. In the end, you’ll get more done, and you’ll feel better about the work that you do.
Summary:
Productive people know they will make mistakes and learn from them. They take responsibility for both their successes and failures.
If you’re new to goal setting and time management, it can be tough to know how to prioritize your work.
You can become overwhelmed if you give yourself an unrealistic number of tasks to complete. Be realistic about what you can do in a given amount of time.
Learn how to prioritize your work to know which tasks need to be done right away and which ones can wait.
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