Everyone wants to be more productive, but like most things, it’s easier said than done.
A lot of times it’s more about being in the right frame of mind than anything, but I want to share 10 simple hacks that have worked for me to dramatically increase my productivity. Hopefully some of these will help you increase your productivity as well.
1. Delegate As Much As Possible
“I trust the people who are working with me. I delegate” - Mario Draghi
There’s no way that you’ll be able to do everything on your to-do list, so you need to learn how to delegate, and assign the more trivial tasks to someone else. If you have no one internally to assign it to, use a service like oDesk, Elance, or Fiverr to help you find freelancers.
2. Use IFTTT
IFTTT stands for If This Then That, and it’s a service that is sure to save you some time and energy. This service lets you trigger certain rules based on certain conditions, and works with tons of other providers out there. For example, "If I favorite a tweet on Twitter, Then send me an email", or "If I take a picture with Facebook, Then send it to Twitter and Dropbox as well". It’s a great tool, and I use this one a lot.
3. Sign Up For Lumosity
It’s important to keep the brain active to ensure that you’ll be productive all the time. When you’re taking a break from a task at work, I’d recommend signing up for a brain training service like Lumosity to exercise your mind and keep you sharp.
4. Work In Blocks
One of my favorite productivity hacks is something called the pomodoro technique. Essentially it means working in blocks of 25 minutes, and then taking a 5 minute break.
Even if you don’t specifically use the pomodoro technique, I definitely recommend you working in small chunks of time and taking regular breaks. I find this makes me much more productive than trying to work solidly all day.
5. Use Trello
Trello has been a life saver, and I have Trello open at all times at work and at home. Trello is a really clean board that gives you a nice view of your task list, broken down into columns, like to do today, to do this week, done today, etc…
It’s how my team and I collaborate on certain tasks and how we know what each other are doing at any given time.
Oh, and it’s free!
6. Exercise
This is probably the most important one on this list, because it has lasting effects both at work and at home. If you want to guarantee that your productivity goes up, exercising is the best way to do that.
No more excuses that you don’t have time to workout, because now it’s been proven scientifically that you can get a really high quality workout in 7 minutes.
7. Use RescueTime
One of the keys to becoming more productive is to understand how you’re currently spending your time.
RescueTime is an app that helps you to understand where you’re wasting time during the day. RescueTime runs in the background and provides detailed reports of your activity so you can learn how to get the most out of your day.
8. Eat Properly
In my experience, eating properly can have a huge effect on productivity. After all, if you’re not adequately fueled, how can you expect to get anything done? Try ditching the processed foods and eat more superfoods to get the most out of your diet.
9. Work From Home
Not every employer will allow you to do this, but this is a really big one for me. I don’t do this all the time, but ideally once per week, I like to work at home. Don’t get me wrong, I love my office, but I find I have my most productive days when I work from home.
Try it for yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.
10. Listen To Educational Content
I love doing this. It makes me feel so much smarter, and probably subconsciously motivates me to work harder, but listening to interviews on Mixergy, or TED talks really helps me expand my mind and ultimately be more productive.
These are some pretty simple “hacks” to implement, and they have helped me tremendously. To sum it up very simply, it’s about being super focused, on the right things, and setting yourself up so that your brain is in top shape.
There are plenty of nifty tools to encourage productivity, collaboration and team building out there. It’s just a matter of finding ones that fit well with you and your organization.
What about you? Any productivity hacks you’d like to share?
About the Author
Jacob Shriar is the Growth Manager at Officevibe. When he’ is not reinventing the world over a glass of scotch, he likes to find new skills to learn.