Increasing Productivity Part 1

This is Part 1 of the Increasing Productivity Series. Whether or not these tips will work will depend on how you operate. Experiment with these. Keep the ones that work, toss the ones that don't.

1. Do what you love.

When you actually like doing what you need to do, you will spring into action a lot faster than if you hate doing what you need to do. You won't have to spend much time trying to motivate yourself to be productive. Do what you need to do to enable yourself to spend the majority of your time doing what you love.

2. Outsource what you hate.

If there are some boring but necessary tasks that you have to do everyday, you can also pay someone else to do it for you. Of course, not everything can be outsourced but for the things that can be, if it makes sense financially, it's a good option. Freeing up your time to do more important things to improve results is a great way to increase productivity.

3. Have daily goals.

If you want to be more efficient and productive with your day, then you must know what needs to be done in advance. If you don't know what to aim for, you'll be wasting time running in circles. We all have goals that we want to accomplish. Isn't that the point of increasing productivity? To be able to achieve more in less time?

4. Do the most hated tasks first.

There will always be things on your to-do list that you will prefer not to do even though you know it's important. If you can't outsource it, then just do it first to get it over with. Once you tackle the task that you want to do the least, doing the rest of the things on your list will be a lot easier.

5. Do important tasks during peak times

We all have times during the day where we are more productive, energetic, and alive. For some people, it's early in the morning. For others, it's late at night. Which ever time of day you are normally at your best, tackle the task that require focus and longer periods of time to work on. For example, if you are a writer and you are most creative at 6 in the morning, then that's when you want to be writing.

That's it for part 1 of the increasing productivity series.

Improve Productivity

If you want to improve productivity, one of the best things you can do is have a clear focus. By this, what I mean is know exactly what the end result is. If you don't know what the outcome of doing the things that you do, then you'll be running in circles for the rest of your life.

Too many times, people will start their day with a list of things they need to do. This is a great way to increase productivity, however, if the list of things you need to do have little or nothing to do with your main outcome, then it's pointless. If there is no purpose in doing them, why do them?

Why do we even bother doing things in the first place? Is it not because there is a goal that we are trying to achieve? Without a goal, a purpose, then what is the point of even trying to increase productivity? There really isn't one if you think about it.

So since you have a goal you want to achieve in the quickest most efficient time possible, then it is imperative that you always have things on your list of things to do everyday that brings you closer to achieving your goal. If you have anything on there that doesn't contribute to the obtainment of your goal, then just cross it off the list.

When it comes down to wanting to improve productivity, you have to make a decision about what is really important to you. There will have to be some sacrifices. If the goal that you are going for is important to you, but you really like watching reality shows for example, then you have to make a decision to stop watching them or at least reduce the amount of time you waste. By knowing what is important and what is not, and deciding to cut off what is not, your productivity will increase.

There are many ways to improve productivity, and I will list a bunch of them out in a later post, but the biggest one is simply knowing what the end result you are trying to get is. This may seem obvious but believe it or not, most people still don't know exactly what they want.

Once you figure that out, your focus will become like a laser instead of dissipated. Things that don't bring you closer to your goal can easily be eliminated, and as a result, you will dramatically improve productivity.