The book “20 Principles of Productivity” by Alex Genadinik is a collection of some important principles and lists by which one can boost their overall productivity.
Productivity is often a confusing term as it means different things to different people. For some, it may be an app that can help in getting more work done. While for some, it may be optimizing some ways you work to make you more efficient like getting enough motivation and ending procrastination.
In this book, the author has compiled a complete list of productivity strategies that can help you discover your life’s purpose by being more productive. The methods discussed below will allow you to concentrate on things that are of utmost importance to you, thus enhancing your productivity.
1. Improving your focus
For many of us, strengthening our focus over a long period of time has always been a challenging process. Many a time, we allow ourselves to get distracted easily by new emails and other notifications. We, in no time, have undoubtedly become online addicts. But you need to realize that the longer and more intensely you can focus on a single task, the more productive you will immediately become.
Also read: You need Attention Management.
2. Self discipline
Before working productively becomes a habit, you should do your best to discipline yourself to work more and work better. The truth is that your productivity and success start and ends with you. If you aren’t up for the challenge, no magical strategies or techniques will have a chance of working.
If you ever find yourself scratching your head, wondering why some things aren’t working out as you had hoped, first and foremost look inside yourself and your own actions. Did you do the best you could? And did you take the steps to apply what you had learned? Did you try to apply what you learned again and again until you got it right, and tried to identify what caused things to go wrong?
Self-discipline builds your inner strength and character. If you are disciplined enough in your life, your success rate automatically increases. The kind of results you get are going to directly correlate with the effort you put into improving your productivity.
3. Building healthy work habits
Good health is important not only for our body but for our mind, character, thoughts, decisions, and hence our life. Adopt healthy work habits like being more punctual, active, taking appropriate breaks, smiling more, and being grateful.
4. Productive apps and software
In this technical era, when most of our needs are fulfilled online, there is no way we can’t utilize it for our productivity. Today, so many applications you can use on your phones to track your productive hours in a day.
5. Minimizing distractions
You may be surprised by how many distractions occur during the day. For most of us, they happen so frequently that they become too difficult to even track. Distractions don’t just interrupt you but divert you from your chosen path. For example, unplanned calls, impromptu meetings, socializing with people, and many more.
Therefore, minimizing distractions become an important step towards being more productive.
6. How to improve organization of your desk and work area?
Your laptop or desktop or your working area must be clean enough and organized. And if it’s not so, most of your time may be wasted on seeing that mess only. You need digital decluttering to improve your working productivity.
7. Prioritization
We all have moments where we seem to be really busy, doing a lot of work, yet not making any major progress in our overall project. We have a list of tasks in our To-Do list, which we need to complete on a particular day. As a student or working professional, you must work on honing your judgment regarding which tasks will get you closer to your goals, and which won’t. At this point, setting priorities for the most important things is a must-productive hack. So start maintaining a priority-wise To-Do list. It can help you break big daunting tasks into smaller manageable ones.
8. Reversing procrastination
Have you turned yourself into a dreamer instead of a doer?
Is perfectionism preventing you from starting?
Are you avoiding your tasks?
If yes, then you are gradually falling in the Procrastination trap. And if you did not reverse these deeds, in no time it will become your habit.
In order to reverse procrastination, you can start with simple steps. Like in spite of telling yourself, “One more episode, then work”, reverse it with, “Just a little more work, then I can rest without any pressure on my head”.
9. Improving your memory and cognitive ability
Improving your memory will help you learn new things faster and be more organized throughout your day. It will have far-reaching positive effects on many aspects of your life.
There are a number of things you can do to improve your memory. You can take some mental exercises as well to improve your aptitude and memory like solving puzzles or other mind games. Other than this some simple daily habits might work for you.
- Eating a healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables instead of processed foods filled with sugar.
- Get regular exercise and maintain your overall health.
- Take supplements that help with brain function.
- Get plenty of sleep.
- Get mental stimulation rather than doing mindless activities like watching TV.
- Reduce stress which kills brain cells.
- Protect your brain form too many distractions.
- Read more books.
- Play thinking games like chess.
10. Overall health maintenance for productivity
Eating healthy, always staying hydrated, taking proper sleep and regular exercise are the simplest and the most productive ways to take care of your physical as well as mental health.
11. Life purpose
One of the best ways to discover your life purpose is to get to know yourself. Looking inside yourself will help you discover your life purpose and the life goals that are ideal for you. Being more self-aware will also help you avoid the trap of following a life purpose that someone else or some organization has set for you.
12. Task Delegation
Delegation is a process by which you hand off the tasks on your company’s overall to-do list to someone else.
Understand that you can’t do or know everything on your own, and the more tasks you can hand off to someone else, the more of your time you will free up to complete additional important tasks. If you are a student trying to delegate your homework, nice try. This section is not for you. Do your own homework! But if you are running a business, you can find many different types of people you can hire to delegate tasks like:
- Freelancers online
- Day laborers or local concierges who will perform physical work on-site.
- Temp workers
- Contractors
- Employees
- Co-founders
- Family members (if you ask nicely)
- Other companies you partner with if you negotiate your partnership details well.
13. Time management
Keeping a calendar and a schedule with you can help you to manage time in a better way. You can practice the famous “Pomodoro- Technique” for proper time management.
To manage your time better, you can adopt these methods.
1) Prioritize tasks that will have the highest potential of getting you closer to your goals.
2) Have the discipline to take out low-priority tasks.
3) Have more time left to do other important things.
4) Don’t squander newly discovered extra time on frivolous things like watching TV.
5) Get important things accomplished.
6) Move your life and business forward.
14. Scheduling
Schedule your tasks according to their priorities. Do the most important thing first.
15. Self-awareness to make wiser choices
Improving yourself has a snowball effect that accelerates as you go. The sooner you start, the further you will end up.
If you are not in touch with yourself, you will be prone to mistakes when choosing your professional and life goals which will lead to natural mistakes in choosing what to work on. You know yourself the most. So, you need to let go of your imperfections and kickstart anyway.
Also read: Perfectionism is perfectly imperfect!
16. Goal setting
Look back at your last 30 days of work, and identify which tasks actually brought you closer to your goals. It will help you identify your most productive, goal-oriented tasks so that you know which tasks to avoid or which to work on. You need to uncover your life purpose and set yourself on the path that is right for you.
17. Boosting motivation
Once we start losing motivation in whatever we are doing, our quality of work starts degrading. You can expect much better results only when you are enthusiastic and motivated about your tasks. And for that, it becomes essential to find ways which can boost your motivation.
Motivation is a big term in itself, so you will need to find out which source will be most apt for you. For some people, watching or reading motivational stories may work while for a person like me, even looking at a particular photo from my galleries is enough!
18. Meeting productivity
Do you enjoy the meeting at your office?
“Of course not” is the answer to a maximum number of employees.
Most of your time is either wasted in waiting for others to come on time or in extending discussions to come to a conclusion.
Your psychology has an important role to play when it comes to meeting productivity. Make sure to improve your meeting goals like the waiting time of the team members, the idea generation time, or preparing the agenda with the topics to discuss. Just like you need to set goals in your life, every meeting must have stated goals that are stated when you set up the meeting and invite people to it.
Conclusion
The more of the principles described above you master, the better you will do in whatever you are working on.
