Relax and Simplify: 5 Personal Productivity Habits That Ease the Day
Simple Ways to Calm and Organize Our Work & Home Lives
Image by Andreas Klassen from UnSplash
Well-considered habits and personal productivity go hand in hand. Whatever our work and daily tasks may be, finding ways to simplify and organize our to-do lists, our physical surroundings, our mental chatter, our fitness, home, and work lives is beneficial. Go-to strategies to ease and organize involve well-considered routines and habits.
Habits are often associated with limiting rules but in truth, habits are the opposite of limiting. Well-considered habits are about ease, simplification, and automaticity. Habits lead to routines, and routines reduce the number of tiny daily decisions we face. Work toward adopting the most effective habits of highly-productive people by trying the following:
Create Enjoyable Mornings — Use the first minutes of the morning to set a tone by meeting and greeting the day with gratitude and peace. Make the morning yours by creating a routine that includes phone-free quiet and putter time.
Make a List with a Tough-Stuff-First Mindset — Highly productive people plan and they use short 2 to 3-point lists. Bullet-pointing our to-do’s provides a helpful visual from which we prioritize by choosing two or three items that will be completed or advanced by the end of the day.
Cultivate Single-Task Deep Work — When it’s time to work, curb distraction and be dressed and set up to perform and produce. Be a professional with a focus on detail, craft, and caring. Success is liking who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Do good work in blocks of time, and take breaks. The body and the mind benefit from opportunities to refresh and change focus throughout the day.
Manage your Energy and Your Time — Productive people use energy as a metric to gauge what to do and when. They understand that time is a non-renewable finite resource. They are deliberate in the way they use time by scheduling, guarding, and prioritizing professional engagements, exercise, social commitments, family time, rest, and rejuvenation.
Learn to Say No- People routinely categorize tasks and events that are not obligations as obligations. They underestimate, over-promise, and often overdo. Determine what works for your wellness, priorities, career, and family, and politely decline invitations, commitments, and requests when it’s time to do so.
Productivity is important for our careers, focus, energy, and confidence. The habits and strategies listed above represent effective ways highly-productive people address and manage their work. While some people consider habits to be limiting, in truth habits are about ease and automaticity. Habits lead to routines, routines lead to systems, and systems can move us from productive to highly-productive, from success to high success.