How to save your day and get the most of it
It happens that we get tons of tasks that we should finish them daily, but we’re used to be late at finishing them due to many reasons. In this blog post, I’d love to share some thoughts that helped me improve my productivity and get the most of my days.
Productivity is a crucial matter and it’s not optional in successful people lives and it should not be in yours as well.
Are you used to experiencing procrastination on important tasks in your entire days? Procrastination is a normal result due to that pressure we’re experiencing. It’s more like escapism from the reality of what we have to do and how important it is.
Plan your day
You need to make a plan for your day so you can track your tasks and measure what consumes your time and what can be a good investment out of it.
The day that isn’t planned to, is a wasted day.
Take it as a rule. Each day has its own incidents in addition to its routine, but that’s not ought to be your case here. Take 5-10 mins before sleeping to make a list planning to what’ll you do the next day.
Optimize your list
1- Begin Immediately
It may sound like a cliche, but it is not. To overcome procrastination, you should start immersing yourself in the activity immediately. When you leave the time for yourself to decide if you should do the task now or later, you’ll find an excuse to postpone it and it’ll be a false pretense most of the time.
2- Choose your tasks wisely
We all have hobbies, but not all of them have the same importance nor worth our time. They shouldn’t have the same weight on your tasks list and even the trivial ones should not exist.
3- Prioritize tasks
Tasks that have the most positive impact on your day progress should be on the top of your list. Most of the time, they’re the tasks that have +70-80% more importance than other tasks that might be trivial. They may be not likable and I am not asking you to like them, but when you finish them at first you will feel the joy of achievement. Tasks tend to be energy-consuming so you better start with the most important ones as when you reach the end of the day, you’ll have got the most of it in a proper way.
4- Switch-tasking
If you consider Multi-tasking is doing multiple tasks at the same time, you should stop doing it then. Switch-asking instead is the ability to finish a task and start another one immediately without being distracted . You should also separate hard tasks to get out of the pressure cycle.
5- Track your time
Each task in your list should be specified by the time it should take. If you felt that you estimated the time wrongly, it’s better to play the priority game here and decide if these tasks should take another task’s time or not. If you prioritized your list as we mentioned before, you’ll have an easy decision to make here. Just don’t fall in the trap of doing one or 2 tasks and leaving other ones with more importance neglected.
6- Consistency
Make planning for each matter in your life a habit. You’ll be more organized and more aware of when and what will you achieve a certain goal this way.
7- Plan for the long-term too
Daily plans are great for saving the day, but you should plan for the long-term for larger projects and tasks and divide them into tiny tasks in the short-term.
8- Pick your own style
I prefer planning on sticky notes because I feel joy when I finish a tough task and check on it. I keep the stuck note near my desk where I am working to remind me of my tasks every time I see it. I used to use Google Keep on my mobile and laptop too, but I am more into sticky notes nowadays. If you’re a web developer like me and you have other fellow developers, you may choose a service such as Trello, but it’s not our case here.
You can try different ways and pick the way you find it more suitable for you.
9- Keep away of distraction
As I’ve mentioned before while doing a tough task we like to delay or even leave it. Having distractions around us help to enforce this idea. Keep an eye on what distractions do you have and keep away from them while doing a task. It can be a friend chatting/calling you, noise, children, games, etc…
10- Don’t be hard on yourself
Your tasks don’t have to be strict at all. They should include some fun. And even after each worthy task, you should reward yourself for some time, but it shouldn’t be for so long to not mislead the track of your tasks. You should also make a free day out of tasks, jobs emails, etc… For me, I’d love to free a day of my week out of programming, freelance, or other stuff. I prefer watching a movie, visiting a friend, and I even read tech articles on such a day. I know that reading articles may not be a relaxing activity for some of you in this day, but I love reading them so I do it(and they’re indeed being part of my list most of the time.
Conclusion
Plans aren’t the only time saver and we all waste time, but not equally and it will happen that you mislead the track of your time. You should be aware of this truth and minimize the time wasted as much as possible. Successful people are more organized and more aware of their weak points and they are always consistent and patient about working to achieve their goals. and you should be too.