Productivity Ideas, Tools and Books

This article presents some practical ideas, books, and tools that I have found useful to increase productivity, especially in knowledge-based projects and work.

Ideas for Productivity

Work with SMART objectives/goals and tasks lists and keep an eye on the big picture:

If you want to get things done, set up your priorities what do you want to achieve by what time and why(hours, days, weeks, months etc), without knowing your direction and just trying to get things done will slow you down if you are not clear and have time-bound intelligent objectives associated to particular task, assignment or project.

“If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY”- Simon Sinek

Take some time to make a strong Plan A and then stick to it:

Never make a Pan B, always go for a smart intelligent plan A with full confidence and belief, as soon as you have plan B, you will end up executing it instead of focusing your efforts and intention to execute plan A. Running a Plan B means you are executing a mitigation plan of plan A failure that can have negative impact on your overall productivity.

“There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A”- Will Smith

Sleep well and always recharge your productivity machine, The Brain:

Sleep well, there are the number of stories of break down or burn out or even lack productivity for people that don't prioritize sleep. Productivity depends upon our lifestyle and diet as well and if your body and brain are rested well, you can focus and get things done with quality and faster. Tired brains are slow and less productive.

“Sleep will enhance your ability to explore, make connections, and do less but better throughout your waking hours.”-Greg Mckeown

Make habits that boost your productivity:

If your productivity and focus depend upon your will power, your environment will beat that more often, no matter how much motivated or passionate you are about something. So, in order to get things done consistently, change your habits to suit your goals professionally and in life.

 As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits suggests asking the question to yourself: “Can my current habits carry me to my desired future?” 

Have a Long term Plan for every short term action:

Plan your short term goals, actions list and plans after planning out long term goals, consider your long term goals are the molecules and to achieve them you need to bond together atoms (short term goals), it will increase your productivity as you can always see the big picture and every little task will feel significant and will grab your attention.

Monitor your progress to give you the feeling of accomplishment:

Micro-level progress monitoring to create the feel of accomplishment, you will be more productive if you think you are making progress, the system that I use, I call it micro-level progress tracking and monitoring,

Work on your environment:

Create a distract free and clutter-free space with the minimum stuff on your desk and leaving away anything that distracts you like your smartphone or any other object, but if your focus depends upon your environment, create your space accordingly only keeping things around you that motivates you, e.g. dose of Steve job quotes or Your favorite football team photograph etc.

Create Focus Mode:

Block time in your calendar for high attention or focus based work as the quality of the most, cognitive task is a multiple of your time and attention as reported by Cal Newport in his "Deep work" book.

Quality of work = time × focus 

In this equation, the focus is a hard bit to get in the world full of distraction, but if you can work in dedicated focus slots where you don't allow any emails or meetings or any other tasks to barge in to ruin your focus, you will realize you can get days of work within hours. As distractions threaten your work output: According to a University of California Irvine study, “it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task” after a distraction.

Make a plan with deadlines:

Deadlines are a big booster of productivity, as soon as you start realizing the deadlines everything starts converging no matter if you get lost in creativity loop or in a deep dive mode within knowledge-based work as research or writing or any other problem-solving assignment. So, give yourself deadlines for each task and make a plan according to the number of days/months/years you have to get it done.

Have breaks, and get out in nature:

Try to take breaks between high focus cognitive projects, like a nature retreat or a hiking trip or boating at a lake or skiing or whatever you prefer, after a high-intensity assignment completion, as it will help you to boost the brain energy and focus as well. Even a walk outside your office will boost your creativity and productivity. In 2014, Stanford University conducted four studies concluding that people that took walk breaks in between work were 60% more productive. Back to back high focus and intensity projects will also deteriorate your brain power over time.

Tools to make you more productive : 

• ACTIONS, app by Moleskin-Simple plain app to plan and organise actions by day and week,
• Slack, for teamwork, file sharing, and discussion
• Evernote, notes saving, websites saving and file sharing,
• Pocket, To bookmark websites and read across different devices and applications,
• Notion, To take notes, plan and manage projects, this tool offers many things in one place.

Best reads to make you more productive:

• Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsk
• Getting things done by David Allen
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

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The article is originally published at Medium.