7 Effective Ways to Increase Productivity and Achieve Any Success in Life

Have you ever thought about increasing your productivity? If So, follow these 7 proven mantras to achieve success in all areas of your life.

The secret to productivity isn't luck. It takes forethought, planning, action, and discipline to accomplish what you need and wants to do.

What is Productivity?

Productivity is a measure of how well a person completes a task. Performing only important tasks consistently is the key to successful productivity, regardless of what you are doing.

How is Productivity Calculated?

Productivity is the output of your useful work divided by the time it takes to complete it. As a result, productive work involves completing more useful tasks in a shorter period.

Here are 7 Proven Productivity Tips

1. Set Daily Routines

Being productive every day starts with a proper routine, here are some important routines to follow every day -

1. Wake up Early: Get up early every day and set your alarm for the same time each morning. Don't scroll your phone immediately after waking up.

2. Sleep Early: It is important to get to bed early so you can wake up early. Stop looking at your phone after you lay down in bed.

3. Drink Water: As soon as you wake up drink lots of water. Your body is dehydrated after sleep so drinking water will freshen your body. The fluids you drink will replenish your body and keep your metabolism running smoothly throughout the day.

4. Meditate: Among the many benefits of meditation, it promotes awareness, decreases stress and anxiety, and helps you to start a productive day.

5. Exercise: Morning exercise can have a significant impact on your productivity. This gives you a sense of accomplishment and puts you in a positive frame of mind.

6. Healthy Food: What you eat for breakfast will directly affect how you feel throughout the day. That is why healthy food is so important. Also, have early dinner at least 2 hours before sleep.  

7. Plan your Day: Using a piece of paper or a planner on your phone, make a list of all the tasks that need to be accomplished throughout the day and make sure you follow your list.

2. Productive Habits

You can increase your productivity by putting some right habits in place, here are some habits to follow -

1. Keep Phone Away: The first healthy habit to develop is to avoid distractions. You are most likely to be distracted by your phone, so you should keep it out of sight when you are doing anything productive.

2. To-do list: Maintain a daily To-do list for every day-to-day task. This can be anything, from work to grocery shopping to planning your day. Always make your To-do list a day before.

3. Scheduling: Scheduling is a better way to plan tasks from days to months in advance than To-Do lists. Plan can be for meeting someone, vacations, personal tasks,  appointments, etc.

4. Declutter: Decluttering means getting rid of all unnecessary items. The items can be physical or virtual. Decluttering involves physically removing items from your workspace or home, etc. Decluttering virtually involves removing unnecessary apps or files from your laptop or computer, clearing your emails, etc. Be Minimalistic, It is the art of keeping your surroundings as simple & Minimal as possible.

5. Read Books: By reading books, you can change your life in a positive and better way. The most successful people in the world read books every day. Reading books can increase your knowledge, reduce stress, improve your vocabulary, and make you a better person.

6. Goals: Make it a habit to set goals in life. Goals are the things that you always hope to achieve in life. They can be both long-term and short-term. Put it in your phone or in a notebook. Write down all the things you want to accomplish in life and work toward them.

3. Stay Disciplined

You can achieve any kind of productive work by being disciplined.

While people are often convinced that motivation is needed to take action, it's considered a myth to believe in motivation while staying disciplined can help you accomplish any task.

We usually need motivation when things are short-term painful and long-term usage. Sometimes what we need motivation for doesn't have an immediate feedback loop.

We work hard but don't see immediate results. It is important to remember that motivation and success create a positive feedback loop.

What is Discipline?

A discipline is to establish a mindset that allows you to stay focused on your planned task without getting distracted until you complete it.

How to stay Disciplined?

Developing a disciplined mindset can be difficult for some, so here are a couple of tips to help.

First, reward yourself when you accomplish something.

Secondly, you can give some money to the person and ask them to keep it until the work is completed, otherwise, they can donate it or use it.

Getting Started

Getting started with any planned work is a very difficult part of the job, to stay disciplined you need to first get started, mainly because people Procrastinate.

Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Avoid procrastination to begin with your Task.

Thus,  getting started with a task requires the initial push, and as you progress it is almost done at the subconscious level with the flow.

4. Don't Multi-Task & Be Consistent  

It's important to note that you don't need to multi-task to be productive. To be a more productive focus on 1 task at a time.

When you try to tackle several goals at the same time, your focus and energy are spread thin, and these are key to accomplishing goals.

Would it be possible to achieve five goals at once? Choose one to focus on first. If you were to have a long-term goal, you'd need to fragment it into a mini-goal, one that you could easily achieve this month.

Being consistent means fully dedicating yourself to one activity, goal, or task. It means staying focused without distraction.

Being consistent requires commitment & discipline. It requires you to take sustained action over a prolonged period.

5. No Distractions

Distractions are the main reason to break any productive work you do. When you begin with a task, you may be focused, but small distractions, like perhaps your friend just texted you, can adversely affect your productivity.

It is recommended that you get into a 'flow state' to avoid any distraction, flow state is when you engage in an activity that takes all of your attention and is challenging but not so challenging that it becomes frustrating.

Distractions that might pull us away from the flow state should be avoided. As much as possible, I would request you to remain in this state. A flow state requires our full attention.

6. 80-20 Rule

80-20 rules state that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. In other words, you work hard for the first 20% and the rest 80% can be easily achieved by your 20% effort.

Known as the Pareto principle and applied in Pareto analysis, the 80-20 rule was first used in macroeconomics in early 20th century Italy to describe wealth distribution.

Invented by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906, Pareto efficiency is best known for its concepts.

Pareto noticed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced 80% of the peas. In his theory of macroeconomics, Pareto showed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

In so many areas of life, this principle applies. Thus, a small percentage of people own a huge amount of wealth.

Small percentages of movies account for a large percentage of gross revenue. Record sales and other revenues are dominated by a few musicians.

7. Take Action

There is no point in discussing ways to increase productivity & achieve success if there is no action taken to put these into practice.

It is essential to take action, and this happens primarily because people procrastinate.

As discussed earlier, procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. This is a major barrier to taking action.

Here is a formula for Action:

It is important to take action from the thought without too much strain, and discipline allows us to do that.

Here are 2 effective Action Steps -

The 2-minute rule:

The following is from David Allen. Doing something that will take less than 2 minutes should be done right now rather than you put on your to-do list. This keeps things from piling up.

The 5-minute rule:

It only takes 5 minutes of the time to get us started with any task. That's all we need to aim for, and if we start to do only 5 minutes, it's fine, we can then gain momentum to do more & Of course, we may do more if we feel so inclined.

Pilot, Plane, & Engineer Analogy to Set Action

With this analogy, we can be more productive by allocating our resources better.

Setting the plane's course and determining its direction is the pilot's job.

In order to land safely, the plane must stay on course and not deviate from it.

A Flight Engineers does three things:

1. Ensures plane is efficient.

2. Makes sure there is enough fuel on board.

3. Make sure everything is organized.

In our lives, we should spend about 15% on piloting, 80% on being a plane, and 5-10% on being an engineer.

Being productive requires knowing which of these you should focus on right now, and which you need to improve overall.

Source: Ali Abdaal

Conclusion

In conclusion, I discussed several ways to increase productivity in detail. I have gathered these points from several web sources as well as my own personal experience.

I guarantee you that if you strictly follow these points you will be able to increase your productivity by at least 80%.

Thanks for reading, if any queries please do email me at hey{@}azfar.co.