Spend Your Downtime Wisely

If you’re trying to learn how to be productive, try to think critically about how you spend your downtime, and ask yourself if you’re setting yourself up to be productive outside of your work hours too.

When you’ve finished work for the day, you’ve got a golden opportunity to relax and prepare a nice meal to help you recover for the next day. But, is that what you do?

If you’ve got a lengthy commute to the office, how do you spend it? Are you mindlessly scrolling through Instagram to find the best dog memes, or are you listening to a podcast or using an app which could provide you with more value?

One thing that I like to do during my commute is use language learning apps like Memrise – it helps me to achieve small goals on the way to work, and it really sets my mind up to be productive through the day.

So, when you’re learning how to be productive, take note of how you use your downtime. It’s all about finding the balance which works for you, and that doesn’t mean that you need to forgo all of your idle downtime to try and increase your productivity. Remember to make time to do nothing too – it’s so important for recharging your batteries.

Prioritize Yourself

If you’re trying to increase your productivity at work, you’re going to need to learn to prioritize yourself sometimes.

But what does that actually mean? Well, try to cut out some of the distractions that you might face during the day, so you can focus on what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Learn to say “no, sorry” to meetings which aren’t absolutely essential.

Work to complete your own tasks first, before working on tasks that’ll help others (unless you’d be blocking other team members).

Try to save the chitchat to lunch time, so you can properly focus on your work for prolonged periods of time.

There’s a lot that you can do to prioritize yourself and increase your productivity at work, so start off by writing down all the things that distract you during a single day.

Once you’ve listed all the distractions, think about which of those are avoidable, and what you can do to make sure that you spend your time working efficiently.

Understand That Productivity Requires Work

When it comes to productivity, I must be clear with one thing: there isn’t a magic formula for success.

All of these tips and tricks that you’ve read about in this article can help you to increase your productivity levels, but they might not be the best options for you.

That’s why it’s important to try and understand how to be productive first, before you build a routine for yourself.

But it’ll take work to understand how to be productive, and that’s the truth.

Everybody is different, so try to find out what works best for you, and change your routine accordingly.

And if you’ve got any productivity tips of your own, feel free to drop them in the comments section below – we read them all!