The hours in a day are limited and every minute wasted is when your competition is getting better. Successful entrepreneurs and young professionals alike all share something in common – they understand the importance of a productive day.
Of course, not every day will be as productive as you wanted it to be, but understanding the lessons learned is what can set you apart from the rest. So here is some food for thought with a list of 10 tips for a more productive day:
1. Plan your day
Planning is crucial. You ought to plan for every day, week and long term. You should segregate the important and not so important activities and plan to do them accordingly. Set your goals for a day and you should write down the list of activities to be finished in a stipulated time.
2. Prioritize work
Urgent activities should be given priority and time should then be divided accordingly. If there is unfinished work then it should be completed first and then take on the new ones. Delaying unfinished work unnecessarily will only lead to stress and burden. We suggest following a ‘MoSCoW’ acronym, where each letter stands for a priority level of each of your task: M=Must-Have, S=Should-Have, C=Could-Have, W=Would-Have.
3. Optimize commuting time
You should make the optimum use of your commuting time. Yes, it is fun to listen to music or a fun radio station, but for the most part this could be a valuable time spent on things as self-improvement by listening to audio books, language CDs for mastering a foreign language or motivational to get you inspired.
4. Take breaks
You should always take breaks at work. This will help you in shedding your stress and giving a fresh start to your work. You should have a morning and lunch breakdaily as this leads to increasing the productivity of your organization.
5. Avoid conflicts
First and foremost thing that you should follow is to accept things the way they are. Don’t complain about things unnecessarily like deadlines, slow computers and strict bosses etc. Do not lament the problems of the world.
6. Share your success
Bragging about your success is a different thing but you deserve the credit for the hard work put into an achievement. Speak up and let the right people know that you have contributed to the success of the company.
7. Attitude
Have a positive outlook towards things. Be ready to face challenges & problems. Don’t run away from them but take them head on. To have a productive day, it is imperative to adjust your attitude towards that and focus on creating value.
8. Eliminate small talk
Avoid gossip & negative chitchat. Constant engagement in small talk and irrelevant topics can tarnish your image and create an association of being unproductive and inefficient.
9. Learn & improve
Always grab the opportunities to learn anything new or improving your talents further. Keep increasing your knowledge by training and education.
10. Set your milestones
Having a vision is important, but paving the way to it is what will get you there. Setting small milestones that eventually build up to your ultimate goal is the most efficient way to have a productive day and become successful.
—
These 10 steps help me stay productive and efficient throughout the day. There are many other techniques and tips that increase the productivity. It is rather important to understand and focus on what is truly important to you and utilize that to facilitate the process.
How do you make your day more productive? Share your tips here.
how to have a productive day, productive day, how to make your day productive, productive day quotes, have a productive day, tips to be more productive, how to make your day more productive, having a productive day, tips for a productive day, tips for planning your day
Planning and listing of work to be done really works for me. If the start up of a day is good and impressive. It really boosts up the confidence that helps the todo list to be completed as per plan.
In the other hand its quite frustrating and demotivating if we fail to meet the plans. At these situations ‘break’ principles works like a motivation and show a bright way to the problem. So i prefer taking a break.
Hope some of my experiences could be a help. Thanks and have a great day.
/Samar
Samar,
Indeed, having the To Do list at the beginning of the day is helpful and gives you that guide for the rest of the day, which you can reflect on at the end of the day. Thanks for adding.
Jahn
Simple, yet so effective. Thank you for the list.
Batyr – thanks for checking it out.
Taking breaks (#4) to read blogs about boosting productivity tend to result in guilt followed by a guilt-induced productivity boost, ha.
Westwood,
Isnt that ironic? lol but works both ways
This is a good list that most working people could follow, more so if one has full control of the activities that needs to be done during a work day. Problem arises when one meeting for example overlaps with another scheduled task.. And you will end not able to strike out all the things in the day’s list.
In lieu to non-stop babblers, I often get the non-stop chatters. Less obtrusive than non-stop babblers but sometimes the annoyance are the same. What I usually do with non-stop chatters(ex. the BOSS and Managers), I shut my IMs off and even my email client and just focus on what i do.
Ian,
It works for me too and I have to shut off all instant messaging and my email for periods of time throughout the day, otherwise you get consumed in communication and lose track of what have been your objectives for that day.
Great discussion Jahn! I wish I could follow all these helpful tips and share it to my colleagues as a way of helping them to be more productive. I’ve read couples of articles before that talks about productivity and some comments on a particular blog said that another way to keep track of your productive hours is to use a monitoring software. Although, that didn’t catch my attention at first but when I read another blog I was more convinced to try using it when one of the users explicitly discussed how the software changed his views towards his job.