Kill Procrastination: Actionable Hacks to Get 93% More Done Today
Kill Procrastination: Actionable Hacks to Get 93% More Done Today
I have a confession: I’m an optimising junkie. Having always too much on my plate, I’ve been trying to improve my output in every area of my life, from writing to house chores.
Life is so precious that spending days without plans and optimising sounds like wasting it.
Today, I’m sharing three small but powerful tips that can completely transform your productivity.
You probably heard of and even tried them, but you probably never stick to them long enough to make them a usable system. If you’ve fallen of the wagon too many times, these basic things are for you:
2-minute rule
If you have problems even starting things you want to incorporate into your routine, this can be a kickstart: the 2-minute rule by David Allen in Getting Things Done:
“If an action takes less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it’s defined.”
How many times have you received an email, opened it, and then decided to come back to it later?
Congratulations, you’ve just doubled your work.
You need to open that email again later and solve the problem.
In the meantime, your cognitive space becomes cluttered with all these emails and tasks you must finish.
2. Transform your checklists.
I love checklists.
As a busy full-time working mum with a side hustle, I have 100 daily things on my to-do list.
Some of them are so obvious, but sometimes, my preoccupied brain needs to be reassured that meals are prepared, the house is clean, and the kids are looked after.
So, checklists are my life-saver, quick confirmation that I’m on track with everything.
But if I go too far, I start drowning in the checklists, becoming overwhelmed and paralysed.
All these notebooks, papers, and mobile apps fire my anxiety rather than help me stay productive.
So, I’m trying to transform all of them into habits.
Why?
Because habits are automatic behaviour.
You don’t need to think about them.
You just do them.
Hence, you don’t have to add them to your checklists.
You’re doing them automatically, letting your brain to chill out just a bit.
3. Use time blocking.
The to-do lists are mostly useless.
We all tend to put too many things on our plates. Then, we are mostly bad at planning the time required to do the task—planning fallacy is a real issue.
As the day progresses and we see how we’re falling behind with the tasks, we feel like complete failures by the evening, even if we managed to complete 18 out of 20. But we didn’t do them all.
To eliminate that gut feeling of disappointment, fully block out your days.
If you have never done that, record the time you need for your most frequent activities: meals, looking after children, and house chores. The same goes for your work.
How much time do you really need to clear your inbox?
To make that presentation?
Write boring report?
Then, sit down and time-block your days.
Ensure you leave some time between the blocks so they are not back-to-back. That way, you’ll have enough time if something slips through the cracks.
Mark every block in your calendar so you can clearly see when things overlap. You cannot do two things or simultaneously be in two places.
Simply blocking your time and sticking to it will transform your days.
I can guarantee.
Some great productivity resources
How to 4x your productivity without burning out by
Five small things that helped me go from overwhelmed to a productive person
Are you being busy or productive? by
Free prompts to speed up your content creation.
I’ve collated 20 + writing prompts you can use to generate better content at lightning speed.
Nice read. I've learned new stuff and jotted them down.
Love those tips.
The 2-minute rule is truly powerful. Because most of the time we waste a lot of energy thinking about doing that task instead of just doing it. And then wasting even more energy by being overwhelmed, since we haven't done it yet. At least that's what I observed in myself.
And thanks so much for mentioning my newsletter issue! I appreciate that a lot.