Easy Steps to Boost Your Productivity

It’s not just another copy-paste collection of advice we’ve all read a million times on the Internet. It’s personal. And despite the cliche title of this post — each of the following advice is based on my own experience, good or bad. I hope to inspire you to remember the basics and remind you of the importance of being in sync with yourself and with life. Let’s begin.

Write everything down.

This is the basic principle of the world-famous GTD methodology. There is just no point in keeping everything in your head. Instead of spending energy on remembering your daily to-do list, use it to complete the tasks at hand. Take a sheet of paper, download a productivity app or buy a whiteboard — and write things down. They will do the memorising for you and you’ll focus on the things that matter.

Plan your day ahead.

This really helps to clearly see what needs to be done and what you should stay away from. I prefer writing to-do lists in the evening, straight after finishing my workday. This way I can clearly see which tasks are urgent or unfinished and which tasks can be postponed or maybe even neglected. Productivity is all about prioritising. And let’s face it, the only priority you have in the morning is to pee.

Do important tasks first.

It sounds simple, but in reality, we tend to procrastinate and postpone getting sh*t done. A simple way of doing so is to prioritise not only in your head but also visually. What I learnt doing is either highlighting my main tasks of the day with a marker or using a bigger font to make them stand out. I also promise myself a nice cup of coffee after finishing bigger assignments, so I usually tend to accomplish them ASAP. You can try this trick with any other treat of your choice and don’t give up if this doesn’t work straight away. Everybody has their bad days.

Use Dropbox.

Timing and productivity are closely related. And to be productive you can’t afford to waste time. Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you save files online and sync them with all of your devices. There is no more need to solely rely on a USB stick, especially if it’s left at home. There are many other cloud services on the internet, but Dropbox is by far my favourite. They are very user-friendly, minimal and still haven’t let me down. We’ve been together for quite some time and I love it ❤

Learn to delegate.

Some people mistakenly assume that they have to do everything by themselves. When I was on the edge of burnout in college, my good friend offered to help, but I couldn’t accept it. Only after going through seven circles of hell and paying to see a psychologist, I figured that nobody expects me to diligently produce amazing results at all times. And that it’s okay to get some help when needed. Just like some students get help from essay writing services, sometimes we all simply need to take a break. And to delegate our tasks, of course. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any point in this paragraph.

Strive for single-tasking.

If you are unfamiliar with this term, single-tasking means doing one task at a time with as little distraction and interruption as possible. Some people recommend starting by turning Telegram and Youtube notifications off or only checking your emails twice a day. I personally love putting my phone in Do Not Disturb Mode. This accidentally happened once and has been my favourite since. Simple, and yet very effective.

Eliminate any ‘rubbish’ from your to-do list.

A lot of people confuse actions with ideas. Sending an important email, feeding your cat or swiping the floor are actions. While working on the case study really isn’t. It’s an ambiguous idea with no specifications. Do you need to email a professor about something or collect some data for your project? Do you need to review university literature or create a survey for peers? It is unclear what task to start with and it will be quite challenging to focus on either of them, without thinking of the rest. When writing a to-do list, write it wisely and be specific.

Save documents where they truly belong.

Another fundamental idea that so many of us continue to ignore. You don’t even need a special storage system to get you started. Just make sure there is a ‘Work’ folder on your desktop where you’ll be saving work-related documents and files. If there is a specific project or a meeting that you are preparing for, enclose all necessary materials there. This won’t only save your time when searching for something but will also reduce clutter and save up some space on your computer. Windows users probably don’t even care, but guys with Mac will sure notice the difference.
Another piece of advice is actually naming your documents. Chances that you’ll remember what ejoijeioweowmjm.docx means are actually pretty low. And as we learnt at the very beginning of this article, there is no point in memorising everything. This just prevents us from being productive.