64: 5 Ways To Improve Your Productivity At Work

Do you ever feel like there isn’t enough time in the day to tackle your entire to-do list? If only you could have just a couple more hours to squeeze everything in.

Instead of trying to turn back time (did anyone else start singing Cher in their head?), today on The Bold Life podcast I’ll give you 5 tips on keeping your brain focused and productive of work. The best part is it’s only going to take you 15 minutes of planning each day!

Staying On Track For The Long Haul

Back in my high school days I did competitive gymnastics. It was nothing Olympic level, but I was pretty serious about it. I was training 20 hours a week, as well as being a student.

This was my first experience with committing to something for the long haul. 20 hours a week over a couple years is a pretty big chunk of time when I knew I was never going to be professional or go to the Olympics. But I loved it! And I loved the challenge of getting better and better at the sport.

Fast forward a couple years to graduate school. The deadlines in my classes were easy to enough to manage, but I also had to complete a dissertation which had no true deadline at all and took years of work.

With no deadline and a million little tasks needed to finish that dissertation it was easy to fall off track. To start procrastinating (to say to myself I have 5 years to do this, no rush).

Thankfully through my years of gymnastics and being a graduate student, I developed a pretty solid system for staying on track with my projects and reaching my goals. No more endless procrastination and avoidance.

Fast forward to now, where I’m my own boss and have to set my own goals and deadlines. I have to make my own motivation!

This is actually a really hard skill for your brain to learn. Naturally, your brain is good at staying focused for brief spurts, like those intense times of motivation. For example, going to the gym every day for a couple weeks. But that initial motivation doesn’t last. After that initial burst of energy and excitement fades, it gets harder to stay on track, especially without seeing any immediate benefit or results.

I know you don’t want the easy, comfortable, normal life. You want the Bold Life, and that’s why you’re here! You want a life where you’re

Setting goals and reaching them
Waking up feeling motivated and excited
Not feeling overwhelmed and exhausted

We All Have The Same 24 Hours In A Day

The last time I checked, there’s no magic wand or time travel that can give you more time in a day.

It’s tempting to try and squeeze more in by cutting out things that your brain actually needs.

You get up earlier,
go to bed later,
work through lunch,
or skip your workout just trying to get that list checked off.

But your brain needs food, water, exercise, and rest! Skip out on any of these areas and your productivity and efficiency will be slacking.

The end result? You feel burnt out, overwhelmed, and exhausted. And not much of anything actually gets done. The frustration of not being able to reach your goals starts to creep in.

Your brain only has so many mental resources, and how you use those resources matters.

If you commit 15-20 minutes every day to go through these 5 steps to being productive at work, you’ll find that a little bit of pre-planning can make a huge difference in your productivity and efficiency at work.

1. To get more done in your day at work, plan the night before

This one is the most important!

We’ve all been there… sitting at your deskwork and staring blankly at your computer for too long because you have no idea where to get started or you get distracted right off the bat and waste minutes (or hours) doing something unproductive like aimlessly scrolling through social media.

This is a common productivity error – spending the part of your day where your brain is at its most creative and most efficient just planning.

Your brain wakes up with the most resources it’s going to have all day. Every task you complete or decision you make takes away some of those resources. If you’re wasting the first part of your day deciding what you’re going to do, you’re wasting prime brain power.

The solution? Plan your day the night before.

At the end of each work day, take a look at what you need to get done the following day and schedule it all in. Make sure to schedule breaks too! Now when you come into work the next day you know exactly what needs to get done and you can hit the ground running.

Bonus tip: If you didn’t get something done today, move it to another day and time. Sometimes things happen and interrupt our schedule, but it’s important to assign that task another date and time so that it’s not left floating and forgotten about.

#2: Not everything on your to-do list is productive work

Some things are just busy work!

When your to-do list is gigantic you’re actually setting yourself up to fail. Even if you get 10 things check off your list, but you still have 20 tasks to go, you’re going to feel frustrated and like you didn’t get anything done, because there’s still so much more to go!

Pick the three most important things form your list that need to get done today. The three things that will make the biggest difference in reaching your goals or tackling your work load. These are the tasks that need to get done first thing, when your brain is at its best and has the most mental resources.

If you end up with extra time on your day, that’s when you can tackle some of your other tasks. The goal is to prioritize the tasks that are productive, not just busy work!

Bonus tip: If you’re struggling to find the most important tasks, they’re probably the tasks you’re avoiding because they seem hard. Look at your list, see what you’re avoiding, and those are probably the things that you need to get done that will make the biggest impact on your productivity.

#3: Breaking tasks down into baby steps = momentum!

A key contributor to procrastination is having tasks on your list that feel too big and unmanageable, so your brain procrastinates rather than starting to work on that crazy overwhelming project.

By taking your big task and breaking it down into tiny, baby steps, each step feels less overwhelming and you’ll make better progress (and get more done!).

Instead of having “record podcast” in my schedule, which seems way too overwhelming, I break it down step by step, including editing, recording, and publishing.

The great thing is your brain loves making progress and checking things off your list. The smaller the steps, the more things to check off, and the more motivated your brain will be to check off each next task.

Bonus tip: Schedule similar tasks together! This will save you time when you’re already set up and in your groove. For example, when I record The Bold Life podcast, I do them in batches (record a couple episodes at once) so that I’m in the right mindset, I’m not setting up and taking down my equipment, and I’m not switching between tasks.

#4: Schedule EVERYTHING

If it’s not in the schedule, it’s not going to happen. Your brain will forget it. Pick a scheduling system and stick to it.

Every day in your schedule put in your three big tasks with dedicated time to complete them. Everything else on your list will fall around your big three if you have extra time.

This also forces you to be realistic about how much time your tasks will actually take. When you put these things in your schedule it shows your brain a realistic perspective on how much you can actually get done.

Scheduling forces your brain to stay on task and you’ll get things done faster when you know you only have so long to get it done.

#5: Get your space ready to maximum efficiency

Get rid of distractions and clutter!

Your brain loves consistency. Having a dedicated work space boosts your mental efficiency and can actually improve your memory.

Keep your work space free of clutter – it’s so distracting for your brain. Having a disorganized or messy desk forces your brain to constantly be multitasking (which we know our brains can’t do).

Put away anything extra at the end of the day.

Papers
Projects
Post-it note reminders
Extra web browsers

Anything that might pull your attention away is going to make you less efficient and less productive.

A Bonus Resource Just For You

Follow these 5 key steps so that when you show up to work in the morning you’ll be able to hit the ground running and make maximum use of your brains best energy because you won’t have to waste energy and resources planning what to do next.

Here’s a bonus: I created a checklist for you! (We all know how much I love checklists). It’s called Your Daily Productivity Checklist – where you can take what we’ve covered in this episode and have it summarized into a checklist form so you can set yourself up to a master of productivity at work. You can find the checklist at www.drnicolebyers.com/checklist

Remember, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, no matter how much you wish you could time travel or wish that the earth would turn slower. You can get more done in a day and make more progress by setting yourself up for success. When you start your day with your brain primed for productivity and efficiency, you’ll get more done and feel less stressed and overwhelmed while doing it.

Show Highlights

[01:28] A challenge I was assigned in a workshop to find my strengths.

[04:48] How I arranged my schedule to avoid distractions and accomplish goals.

[05:45] Intense bursts of motivation and how they wear off over time.

[08:44] Five tips for pre-planning your day to become more effective and efficient.

[10:48] The differences between productive work and busywork.

[13:04] Advantages to scheduling similar tasks together in a work bundle.

[15:36] Reduce the clutter in your workspace to reduce distractions.

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