Becoming More Productive In 2023.

Want to be more productive? Read what I’m about to write and practice them consistently.

You suddenly remember it’s half past 3 pm after you’ve spent the last 2 hours arguing with random Twitter trolls about why Elon’s purchase of Twitter is a terrible business move and why he could have spent that money on better business ventures instead.

Now you realize that you’ve wasted the past few hours without completing any meaningful tasks, the day is almost over and you have to jump on your next team meeting. Realizing this, you become frustrated at yourself for not being productive and then you become more frustrated at yourself for feeling frustrated and then you fall into what I call the frustration loop.

How do you avoid this loop and get things done? Walk with me…🚶

Let’s start by defining what productivity means. Most people might tell you that productivity does not relate to good time management, and I think they’re wholly wrong. While productivity hinges on outputs, it still requires efficient management of one’s time. In simple terms, productivity is the amount of work you can get done within a given time frame.

How To Be More Productive

Be it your personal life or career, you want to be more productive, produce more outputs, and be happy with yourself. To achieve this, here are some things you should know and adopt.

Self Motivation: This is the first step to becoming more productive. Irrespective of what I write or the methods I suggest, becoming more productive solely depends on your personal and individual motivation to do more and become more.

Defining A Productive Day: The first step to becoming productive daily rests on what you define as a productive day. Defining a productive day is synonymous with setting goals or targets. For instance, a productive day might be to complete three items on your task list from a list of 7 tasks. Make it a habit of defining what counts as a productive day, and strive to hit that metric. Anything else you achieve during the day will be an addition to you.

Identifying Your Peak Hours: We each have our peak productive hours. Mine is at the start of the day. You need to know your peak hours and block out time to achieve your core deliverables within those hours.

Concentration Hours: Remote working means working round the clock with no start or end time 😃 You don’t want to fall into this loop. So I have a dedicated timeframe and color code on my wall and calendar with the deep work label. It ranges between 1 to 2 hours daily and is repeated numerous times throughout the day. This helps me mentally position myself to complete some tasks. I don’t check my email or indulge in distractions during these hours.

My 2–1–4 Deep Work Rule: This is a personal rule I apply to myself where I dedicate four hours to core tasks, two hours to the less pressing task, and one hour to some feel-good deliverables. It also means that I break my daily deliverables into three categories. Most times, I leave the 2-hour window open for some quick deliverable. Working in a startup environment made me understand that impromptu tasks/deliverables will come up, so I try to accommodate them while still being productive. This rule is mainly applied to my concentration hours as I spend more than 12 hours daily actively working on my laptop.

Small Tasks First: I know most people will advise you to start with the most challenging tasks, but this approach has never worked for me. My peak productive hours are around the early hours of the morning. Part of my daily routine involves reading a chapter or two from a book, so I start with these light tasks, and then when I notice that I’m getting into my peak productive hours, I switch to my more challenging tasks. This approach does two things for me. One, it gives me that initial satisfaction of clearing something off my task lists and also serves as a good transition into doing more challenging activities for the day.

Take Short Breaks In-Between: I am a fan of the Pomodoro Technique. After completing a core task, I reward myself with about 5–10 minutes. I love short funny videos, so you’ll find me spending my hard-earned 5 minutes watching some TikTok and laughing hysterically before returning to my tasks.

Final Takeaway

Be careful not to fall into the productivity tracking loop. We have many notion templates promising to help you track and improve productivity. I also fell into this loop where I’ll spend more hours moving things around on the productivity tracker than doing the actual work. The pen-and-paper method is as old as human civilization and is still the most efficient way to track task completion and productivity.

I also know that there’re various ways to approach improving productivity, so please feel free to add yours and share with others.

Happy New Year 🎊