Five simple hacks that can skyrocket your daily productivity

Dominating your day before the first cup of coffee!

You didn’t do enough.

You’re a failure.

Where did your day go?

We’ve all been there sometimes: days when you feel perpetually overburdened with all your personal and business chores, goals, and “to-do” tasks without any long-term and effective system to organise them and conquer your day.

Working harder is not a solution.

Instead of taking a step back and trying to find a way to work smarter and come up with a new way to work, our typical response is to work harder and longer hours, sleep less, and find ourselves exhausted and overwhelmed.

I’ve been that person. Years of trial and error were required to improve my productivity skills. It took me even more time to use them actively and consistently.

Photo by Malte Luk

Here are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years that have helped me use my days more productively:

1. Baby steps to better routines

Unless you're an organising genius, you can't incorporate too many steps into your productivity at once. If you try to do that, you’ll set yourself up for failure. New Year's resolutions can’t work unless they are realistic, measurable, and have a specific plan that includes consistency. As James Clear pointed out: habits are created based on repetition and frequency, not by the clock ticking. For each habit you want to add to your routine, the most important thing is consistency. After you succeed with one small change, the rest is easy — repeat and conquer.

2. Get early and use that time smart

Many successful people on the planet swear by their morning routine as the key to their productivity. How you spend the first couple hours of your morning usually sets the tone for the rest of your day.

As Hal Elrod, author of “The Miracle Morning”, says:

“Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days–which inevitably create a successful life.”

There’s something truly magical about getting up early and doing some chores before your first cup of coffee.

3. Get up and get moving!

I won’t try to convince you to get up at 5 AM as Robin Sharma does (although I get up at 4.30, and it works well for me; it doesn’t have to be your story). For some of you, 5AM can be 7AM or even 11AM, as long as you have established a productive morning routine that helps you get things done instead of wasting your time.

For me, getting up early is a perfect start to the day — and when I go for a walk as soon as I get up, it becomes a powerful fuel for my day. You’ll notice a significant increase in energy after getting enough sun and vitamin D. Then, you can start your “golden hour”, the most productive time of the day, when you work on a plan for what you want to accomplish that day. I start with the win — getting my steps done and feeling like a winner already.

Photo by Taryn Elliott

4. Use time blocking

Ordinary to-do lists won’t help with overwhelming tasks and priorities. Plan your day ahead with a time-blocking technique. This approach helped me really understand how much time it takes to finish every task, no matter how small it is.

When you divide your days into blocks, you’ll prevent overtasking, an error that is often made by many ambitious productivity seekers. Apparently, some of the most successful people on the planet use time-blocking religiously.

5. Never miss twice

This is a golden piece of advice from James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Our productivity (or building habits, or any self-improvement) journey often falls into a trap — all or nothing. That approach often prevents us from making progress, and we ultimately fall back to old patterns or bad habits. We’re not perfect, so occasional slips are inevitable. But not letting them to become an excuse for not putting your best self into every day.

As James Clear says in his excellent book Atomic Habits, the best way to stick to your habits or perform your routine is not to make a second mistake. If you skip your gym or morning walk once, it’s ok. If you break your diet or sleep in one morning, it’s not a big deal. Errors are part of the process and sometimes help us grow.

But make sure not to do it twice in a row. Two mistakes are a pathway to an unwanted pattern.

What if you have to battle procrastination?

If you have problems even starting things you want to incorporate into your routine, use the 2-minute rule, coined 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.”

Using this rule is the best way to escape the trap of procrastination—by avoiding it. Put on your athletic shoes and head to the gym. Start the first sentence of your article, and clean just one corner of your desk. Once you start, it will become much easier to stick with it.

Have you tried any of these hacks? If you haven’t yet, start with the first one and keep me posted about the results.