8 Methods to Boost Your Productivity
Who doesn’t love a good hack to make our work lives simpler? So many times, though, the hacks we get online are mostly vague ideas with little practical application in the real world.
However, I’ve made it my business to share tips and tricks that actually work for being organized at home and at work, and I share weekly tips in my popular Friday Five Newsletter (go ahead and subscribe if you’re into this sort of thing). Keep reading for a few of my favorite productivity tips that actually work.
1. Make use of checklists
As Atul Gawande writes in one of my favorite books (The Checklist Manifesto), "Checklists save lives."
It takes mental energy to remember what to do next, even for tasks we've done again and again, and using a checklist saves that precious mental energy so that you can use it for more important things.
Here are some ideas for checklists you might find useful at home and work:
A checklist for things that happen over and over again at work
A checklist of a morning routine for yourself or a kid in your life
A checklist for the steps to remember each time you plan travel
A checklist for your kids' birthday party each year
A checklist for the steps to take when guesting on a podcast
A checklist for your weekly planning ritual
A checklist for what to remember when going live on Instagram
Checklists allow you to be your most brilliant self each and every time, without forgetting necessary steps that really get the most out of your effort.
2. Tackle your email in batches
Emails are so much quicker to get through in batches.
Most of us are reading email every day. So how can we put this efficiency to use? By doing email in batches throughout the day vs. all day long.
I often gamify my email - I'll jot down the # in my inbox (which can be in the hundreds after traveling), set a timer, and then see how many I can reduce the inbox number to by the time the timer goes off. I usually surprise myself by getting the number down to just a handful in under a few hours.
If you’re doing email throughout the entire day, give yourself some permission to experiment with doing it in smaller blocks throughout the day. See what happens! If your Gmail is a bit of a mess, this course of mine might help out.
3. Build habits through celebration
I love thinking about how to make sustainable change for the better in our lives (it's not easy sometimes!).
Stanford University's BJ Fogg wrote about habits being formed via emotions, and that celebration is the best way to create lasting change.
He writes, "Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions. When you are designing for habit formation — for yourself or for someone else — you are really designing for emotions. Celebration is the best way to use emotions and create a positive feeling that wires in new habits. It’s free, fast, and available to people of every color, shape, size, income and personality. In addition, celebration teaches us how to be nice to ourselves — a skill that pays out the biggest dividends of all.
You can adopt a new habit faster and more reliably by celebrating at three different times: the moment you remember to do the habit, when you’re doing the habit, and immediately after completing the habit."
And there are so many ways to celebrate your habit-building wins—buy a new shade of lipstick, treat yourself to a fancy dinner, take yourself to a movie, get a fresh bouquet of flowers for your desk (or all of the above!).
4. Level up your goal-setting with systems
One of my favorite quotes from Atomic Habits by James Clear is this one:
"Every Olympian wants to win the gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful people and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers."
Don't get me wrong—I love goals (entire blog post about how to set them well here from me!), but he's right: having a goal is wholly insufficient.
Few people get to greatness by winging it; you have to have systems and routines to actually make the thing happen. That's where the rubber hits the road.
Level up your goal-setting by putting systems in place that flow with your routine and make the most of your efforts.
5. Greyscale your phone
I've never looked back on a day or week and said, "Wow! That was a great week because I was looking at social media a good chunk of the time." Still, so many of us spend hours scrolling on our phones. To curb this, I’ve turned to the automatic settings in my phone, and it has helped me spend my time in ways that are better for my overall well-being.
At sunset, my phone turns into grayscale mode. It makes the phone a lot less interesting to my brain, so I tend to spend less time scrolling on it.
Here's how to easily set it up on your phone to try it out:
Depending on your Android version, turning on Bedtime Mode will automatically apply grayscale and mute calls and sounds without the option to customize.
You can also experiment with Automations (iPhone) or Bixby Routines (Android) to further customize your scheduled evening routine (e.g., block certain apps, start music, open a specific app, turn on Do Not Disturb, etc.).
You can also experiment with an app like Minimalist (for Android) that takes away the icons on your phone and uses a simplified black-and-white screen with a list of your phone’s apps. It also has an app timer to limit use of the most addictive apps like Instagram and YouTube (thanks to one of my Friday Five subscribers, Alli, for the tip!).
6. Turn off your push notifications
So many notifications we get on our phones, browsers, and computer software are not necessary for us to know the exact second they are sent. These notifications interrupt our focus, pull us away from what we’re doing, and make it more challenging to get back into the groove of what we were doing before—whether it was working, reading, or cleaning the kitchen.
For some of us, one interruption can lead down a rabbit hole of checking emails, scrolling through socials, or Googling local news articles for far longer. Imagine losing an hour of your time looking at your phone (instead of being fully engaged in what you were previously doing) all because someone sent you a meme you didn’t really care to see.
We can change all that by disabling push notifications!
And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can disable the most annoying ones and keep the ones that actually serve your purpose.
Go into your phone settings, find "Notifications" and then turn off most apps' ability to interrupt you. Then do it for your email and Slack and Teams too. Promise it will be OK. Better, in fact.
7. Schedule a Polish Week
What’s a "Polish Week" (think "polish" like polishing your shoes, not the beautiful country of Poland 😉), you ask? It’s time set aside in advance to review your current work systems and routines, assess what’s still working and what needs tweaking, and then get them refreshed and reorganized so they work better for you moving forward!
Leaders, managers, creators, and entrepreneurs alike can benefit from a Polish Week (or Polish Day, if you’re short on time).
To help you along the way, I’ve got this Polish Week Checklist (it's completely free) to get you started.
If you want a more in-depth overview of why a Polish Week matters and a step-by-step Polish Week guide with examples, downloadable checklists, and more for setting up your own Polish Week, I also have a Polish Week Course you can check out. This one is especially useful for folks wanting to lead an entire team in a Polish Week.
8. Behave like a documentary crew was following you around
I encourage you to pause for just 1 minute (click here if you want to start a 60-second timer to help you) and reflect on this question:
What would you spend your time doing today if a documentary crew was following you around?
How would your routines and productivity be affected (improved?) by constantly being observed and recorded? What would you want people to see?
This has helped me capture the concept of "main character energy," a valuable thought experiment that connects me to the impact I want to have and the person I want to be.
You can set this question as a recurring task in your calendar (I put it in Asana) so that it comes up occasionally and you can pause to consider it as you plan.
Want more tips?
If you’d like more tips like these, my popular Friday Five Newsletter is the best place to get them every week!
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About The Author
Jessica Eastman Stewart is a consultant, workshop facilitator, and podcast guest expert. She teaches busy professionals how to get more organized at home and at work so they can stop feeling worn out and start living a Joyfully Managed Life! Thousands of readers drop everything when her weekly newsletter, The Friday Five, arrives in their inbox. Every Friday, you’ll get FIVE amazing tips to help life feel INSTANTLY more joyful and easy!
