5 tips to be more productive

Tip One: Start your day the night before 

Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you’re working through the night! Instead get organised for the day ahead and get a good night’s sleep. Pack your bag, make your breakfast and your lunch, set out your clothes, put your coffee mug in place, whatever you can do to get yourself prepared for the next day, so when you do get up, you’re ready to go.

Tip Two: Get up earlier and accomplish a simple task

For many of us, getting up earlier than we need to is never easy. But even an hour of half an hour earlier is enough time to achieve something. You’ll feel so productive when you accomplish a simple task before your work or school day begins. Get some cleaning done or some laundry done, or do 20 minutes of exercise. Once you’ve already ticked something off, you’ll feel raring to go to complete the next thing!

Tip Three: Plan your week and write it down

Some people like to do this on a Sunday, others on a Monday morning, and many of us not at all. But if we already know at the beginning of the week what we want to achieve and when we’re going to achieve it, then we’re already part of the way there. Sure things might come up and slightly mess up your plan, but you’ll still be able to keep track of your tasks. And what better feeling is there than ticking off your to-do list?

Tip Four: The to-do list

When you’re planning for the day, be realistic. Don’t write an endless to-do list because you’ll most likely feel overwhelmed and talk yourself out of doing any of it. Instead think about what the three most important things are that you have to do and work to accomplish those. Anything on top of that is a bonus. Start with the most important task and focus on one thing at a time.

Tip Five: Structure your day 

If you don’t know what time you’re going to be finishing for the day or you don’t know when your next break will be, chances are you will find yourself working more slowly or procrastinating. Make sure you give yourself enough breaks to clear your mind, scroll through instagram or facebook, and eat. And make sure you set boundaries for when the day will end so you can have some time to relax and do whatever you like in the evening.

Let’s do this!

(Image: Clipart Kid)

Midnight Motivation: Earn It

Rewarding ourselves and taking breaks from periods of hard work as a form of motivation is much easier said that done. Procrastination is only a simple click away and hitting the snooze button on the various tasks we have to accomplish is much more appealing than getting our hands dirty. It’s easy to reward ourselves without actually having to do the work in the first place. So that means this form of motivation has gone out the window, right?

Wrong. We need to strip down the idea of work-then-reward. To me, at least, guilt and anxiety always underpin procrastination and laziness; in the back of our minds, we know that we will eventually have to get to work and we have nothing to look forward to. Besides, what have we really done to earn or deserve that time to ourselves and time to enjoy? There is something so much more pleasing and refreshing about getting tasks and targets done before rewarding ourselves, because we earn that reward. The reward becomes so much more valuable and special. Those undercurrents of guilt, anxiety and misery are displaced with feelings of accomplishment, fulfilment, relaxation and satisfaction; there is no work that needs to be done because we’ve already crossed it off our lists! If you have trouble with procrastination or getting to the point where you can reward yourself, be realistic but start small; take regular breaks between your tasks and then slowly increase the intervals so that you start to train your mind to not only crave the reward but also crave the feeling of achievement that accompanies the reward and is even a reward in itself. Get the work done, and that reward will taste all the more sweet.