Great Habits To Becoming More Productive (Guide)

Does it sometimes feel like you have a lot to do and very little time to do it? Is your to-do list getting longer and longer, you have less motivation to get things done? Always remember that small adjustments can lead to more lasting changes, but those may take time and discipline. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you work – everyone is looking for ways to be more productive on the job. 

There is always a better way to be more productive between balancing your job, home life and personal relationships.To be productive you have to possess the ability to do what you must do at the right time. You’ve probably spent years cultivating your bad working habits consciously or subconsciously.

However, this can be changed by figuring out some important lifestyle habits. If you’re interested in how to be more productive, read on to discover valuable strategies to help you manage your time more effectively.

What Is Productivity?
Productivity is the amount of work an individual or group accomplishes within a certain amount of time. We often assume that productivity means getting more things done each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done consistently. 

The term can often applies to all areas of life. In a business context, productivity may be measured by the number of sales calls made or a factory line’s output. In an academic situation, productivity could be measured by the number of questions answered or words written.

What Makes You A Productive Person?

The most productive people are great problem-solvers. They come up with innovative solutions and accomplish work more efficiently. They also tend to anticipate roadblocks and begin working on solutions in advance, and so avoid some of the problems that other people run into. 

Productive people develop great productivity skills these are skills that help an individual excel at his/her job, but they can also be skills that bring teams together to work more effectively for the greater goal. Examples of productivity skills include time management, organizational and planning skills, problem solving and decision making abilities.

In its most basic form, productivity is output measured by input. Here are habits to help you become more productive:

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Get Enough Sleep. Your body literally restores itself during sleep. In the four stages of a healthy sleep cycle, the first three are all dedicated to what is called Non-REM sleep and specifically act to restore the physical body.You know from experience what a bad night's sleep feels like the next day.

You feel slow, sluggish and foggy. Your brain will not firing on all cylinders. That is why you need to make sleep as important of a priority as your waking day and devote yourself to at least six hours of good sleep a night.

Use Your Morning To Focus On Yourself. It’s a big productivity killer to start your mornings by checking your email and your calendar. This allows others to dictate what you accomplish. Start your day with a good work out after that eat a good breakfast. This will ensure you’ve got the necessary fuel for a productive day.

Make A Reasonable To-Do List. Don’t overwhelm yourself. To-do lists often fail because we make them way too complex or the tasks are unequal. Some tasks will take a long time, others won’t take any time at all. This creates an unbalance in the way we distribute our time. What happens then is that our to-do list then becomes a procrastination tool. 

Yes, that’s right. Because then we do the easy stuff, and then become really distracted on the hard stuff.

Sharpen The Axe. Productivity tip – time spent getting better at tasks saves time on those tasks in the future (sharpen the axe) There’s a famous quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Whether Lincoln said this or not is debated, but the lesson behind it is important: If you want to be productive, you need to stay sharp. In a modern example, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger attribute much of their success to reading. By spending a lot of time reading, becoming more knowledgeable, and getting better at their trade, they were able to make faster and more accurate decisions.

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Work At The Best Time. One thing that's great about being productive is the ability to be flexible. Really productive people know when they're at their best. But getting enough work done before launch is a great productivity hack. 

If you work for yourself waking up at dawn to work will give you the peace of mind to do get a lot of things down before morning. Whatever you body's naturally most productive time, do most of your work then.

• Focus on the most important tasks first;
• Cultivate deep work;
• Break tasks into smaller pieces;
• Take breaks.

The absence of goals in our lives, or more specifically avoiding to pursue our goals, makes us feel like we are stuck and ineffective. The pursuit of goals in our personal lives, with our relationships, or at work, with our careers, is the difference between a mediocre life or a life full of passion and enthusiasm.

Get Organized. If time is always of the essence, productive people understand that having an organized life means saving time. It takes less time to label something properly or put something back properly than it does to try to find it later in a heap of disorganized junk. 

That is why is it important to get organized in every aspect of your life for maximum productivity. Moreover, good planning doesn't work without taking action. It's important to plan, but many will get lost in the perfectionist trap. It's better to take action on a good plan then to sit on a perfected plan and wait. 

Write Down Your Goals And Take Action

Productive people create the future by taking action. When you stay in the past you become stuck and unable to move forward. The consequences can hit pretty hard. However, to begin learning how to put these experiences behind you – let them go, and begin to live in the here and now.

Get in touch with the areas in your life you would like to change and have more success. Consider three “quick wins” in the next several months that will help you with creating new habits. This will help you build the foundation to support long term success.

Write down the three things you want to do differently in the next few months, things you are not doing now, but would like to begin to do that will give you a greater sense of success, accomplishment and purpose in your life.

Take the time to unwind, decompress, or to put it simply, just “to chill.” Life comes at us hard and fast. Fatigue, stress and exhaustion may begin to settle in on us faster than we may think, or notice. The best remedy for this is rest.