Methods to Help You Keep Productive

There's a desire and borderline obsession to keep productive. This is how I do it.

I have tried just about everything and found that the proposed solutions have only solved part of my productivity madness. As a freelance writer, juggling multiple clients and projects with varying deadlines can be slightly stressful because I want to make sure I meet every project that I’ve taken on besides meeting my personal and business goals. This is when I knew I needed to think about how to keep productive. 

After years of testing out different methodologies and using different products to keep productive, this is what I have found to be helpful.

Theme days

I batch my work on theme days to make sure I know how to organize all my to-dos for the week. I also incorporate Asana to track each task and include the required action items needed for that project. This allows me to plan out my projects on days according to the theme they pertain to, which helps prevent task switching as much as possible, allowing me to keep productive and get things done quicker.

Goals

I could write several articles on this topic, but let’s start with the first step — you need to know what outcome you want. Once you’ve set your goal, you need to reverse engineer how you’re going to reach that goal. Be specific when you’re writing your goals out. The more specific you are, the clearer the vision will be on how to get there.

Create the high-level milestones you need to complete each quarter and then break those down further into tasks and action items, so you know what to get done to reach each quarterly milestone.

I have found that using a yearly life planner has not been as helpful because it’s too broad, so I was searching for a planner that’s specific for goals and I stumbled upon the Cultivate What Matters Powersheets Goal Planner, and it has been everything I needed to set the right intention and actions I need to move the needle on the important goals I want to reach for 2021. I use this planner in combination with my digital calendar and Asana to make sure I keep productive and stay on track with smashing all of my goals.

Perfection

Part of the reason why productivity is elusive is that we don’t want to fail. We know we need to get things done, but if the task is large, it’s very difficult to get started. I, for one, have done everything I can to avoid starting on a project because it can be overwhelming, and I think to myself, what if I do it wrong?

The best thing to do is just start, do what you can, and refine as you go. You’re never going to get everything done as perfect as you want, and that’s okay. Just start, do the work, and be happy when you’ve finished. Done is better than perfect.

Hard vs. Easy

We’re told to do all the easy things first because you’ll get them out of the way — and yes, you will, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be very productive. Instead of thinking about it as hard vs. easy, think about how you can break down a hard task or project to make it easy. Once you’ve planned and mapped out your project into smaller steps, you’ll realize that it’s pretty easy to do.

Putting these methods into practice is the hard part, but once you implement them and make them a habit, and you will be able to keep productive much easier.