5 tips and tricks to boost your productivity
Especially during times like these, we have been forced to work from home and sometimes, you know, it really isn’t a motivating day for us to get into work.
So these tricks can help you get into the “flow” state of mind.
Be it a weekend or a busy weekday, these tips can easily be incorporated and used in every aspect of your life.
1. Pomodoro Technique
If you are into productivity you must have already heard about this method.
What we do in this method is set a time slot of say 25 minutes and we focus only on that task at hand for the next 25minutes. Any distraction that we encounter can be logged down somewhere on a piece of paper.
So as soon as you encounter any distraction, it has to go on paper and then outta your mind. It is gonna be 25 minutes of sheer focus on the task at hand. No distractions, just pure focus.
Now after the 25 minutes have been completed, you take a 5 minute break.
You can use these 5 minutes to take a small walk, do some stretching or attend the distractions you encountered.
Now you repeat the process again for 3 times till you take a half hour long break.
This will make sure that no distractions are hindering you working and also gives you 25minutes of laser focus at work.
There is no hard and fast rule that the timings has to be 25–5 , it can be 55–5 or 50–10, I have seen some people who use this method as a start point to work state and keep working for hours together without taking a break.
2. 3 second rule
Now this 3 second rule just serves as an initial momentum to get you started at work or give that spike for adrenaline rush.
All you have to do after deciding that task you are gonna do is, count backwards from 3 to 1 and the “GO” should serve as a momentum to push you into doing that work.
This will be great in the long run, because you’ll be training you mind to respond to a signal that 3,2,1.. Go is a sign that you have to get into work.
3. 20 second rule
It so happens that, you might have decided to do something, you almost would’ve gotten up to do it, you have that motivation, but then you suddenly get lethargic and procrastinate.
That is because your mind always chooses the path of least resistance or quick rewards, like playing cod or watching a YouTube video or a single Netflix episode that turns into an all night marathon.
So whenever you decide to do a task, you have 20 seconds to start taking action on the task you decided to work on, if you cross that period, you brain starts to contemplate your decision of choosing that work.
So keep this in mind the next time you think you want to work and combine it with the 3 second rule. I’m sure you are gonna start working right off.
4. Time-boxing method
This method is relatively different, it doesn’t help you achieve any certain goal but what it does is help you not to waste time, over working on any task.
Suppose you have 5 tasks at hand, and all of them have to be completed by eod.
So you divide your time into 5 blocks ( technically this is time blocking ) where you are going to work only on the task you decided on.
So far, so good.
But what the time boxing method suggests is that, you stop your work after the end of the block no matter what what the status of the task is, is it done, or not completed.
This is really helpful in situations where you don’t want to spend a lot of time only on one task and later rant that you didn’t have the time to do other tasks.
Now after that specified time period is over, you reflect on why you couldn’t complete that task or what did you under/over estimate before doing it. And the next time allocate reasonable time for that task.
5. Prioritize your tasks
Now this isn’t really a trick, or is it?
This is more of the order in which you have to do the tasks.
Realistically speaking, every task falls into one in each of the categories.
Urgent, Not Urgent
Important, Not Important.
And with the help of Eisen Hower matrix we can decide on the task we can do.
The image is pretty straight forward, isn’t it?
