In pursuit of greater productivity, identifying those wasted pockets of time and putting them to use is one of the best strategies to maximize your time. Every once in a while, I’ll scan my days and look for windows of time I’m not utilizing well. Those short windows that feel wasted really add up. When you identify them and commit to putting them to better use, you can manage your time in a way that puts you in driver’s seat.

You Snooze, You Lose

If you’re in the habit of hitting snooze, you’re losing valuable time every morning. Once your alarm has woken you up, you’re not really benefiting from the rest of sleep, yet you’re also not getting a start on your day. Whether the mental commitment is enough, or you need to place your alarm somewhere you can’t reach from the comfort of your bed, jump-starting your morning on the first alarm is a great way take back those minutes of snoozing and put them to better use.

Get to Bed

And get there around the same time every night. A bedtime might feel like something you grew out of decades ago, but bringing it back can have real benefits (like not feeling like you need to hit snooze the next morning). Get intentional about your evening routine. Set a specific time you’d like to be in bed by, refine your evening routine, and stick with it. If you find yourself tuning into another episode or mindlessly perusing the web at 11pm, chances are that time could be better spent giving your body and brain the rest they need. Not only is it a better use of your time, but it also sets you up for optimal productivity the following day.

Maximize Your Showers

Whether it’s going over your schedule for the day or committing to that gratitude practice you wanted to start, your time in the shower can be a great place to engage your brain in something you might not otherwise have time for. Instead of just zoning out, try a more intentional meditation practice or go over the talking points for an upcoming meeting.

Take Advantage of the Phone-Check Habit

Some studies suggest that the average American checks their phone around 80 times a day. How many of those times are actually to accomplish something productive? Whether we’re waiting in line, on the morning commute, or in between meetings, if you harness this habit of wasting a few minutes here and a few minutes there for your benefit, you’d be surprised at what you can fit in. A great option is downloading a book on your phone. While you might not be carving out an hour-long reading session every day, if you put those small windows of scrolling to getting through a few pages instead, you’ll be working your way through a book every day.

No Window to0 Small

How often do you find yourself with a little chunk of time that feels too short to tackle anything important? Especially if you have meetings, calls, and other appointments that often tend to be delayed or run a bit late, your neatly time-blocked schedule may shift in a way that creates five and ten-minute windows with nothing planned. Take advantage of these. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking five minutes isn’t long enough to get something done. If you find yourself in that mode of thinking, create yourself a micro to-do list of short tasks you can check on if those unexpected bursts of free time.

 

 

You don’t have to reclaim every moment for work. Sometimes the best thing we can do for our overall productivity is to take a break. So, instead of mindlessly scrolling through your phone or half-heartedly tackling a task, intentionally giving your mind a break can be just as rewarding as checking something off your to-do list. Perhaps you take that 10-minute block of free time to talk a stroll around the block, or maybe you download a comedy book on your phone and read that instead of scrolling through your newsfeed. However you choose to utilize the time, reclaim those minutes so that you’re in control.

Time-management strategies are great, and I love learning about —and sharing— different ways to maximize productivity and streamline work. I use many of these strategies in my own life on a regular basis, and they’ve definitely given me a better sense of control over my time. Some days though, no matter how well-planed my schedule is or how many distractions I avoid, the to-do list is simply too long to fit in a single day. When that’s the case, I find the biggest inefficiency to be choosing which items to tackle when — how do you prioritize when every task seems to need your attention?

Enter the Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Eisenhower’s strategy gained popularity in Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you haven’t encountered this principle yet, it’s a way to organize your tasks and efficiently decide where to direct your attention based on the task’s urgency and importance.

What’s the difference?

Urgent is pretty self-explanatory — those tasks that truly do require immediate attention. They tend to also have immediate consequences if we don’t complete them. It’s that feeling that gives them a sense of urgency. Urgent tasks are often connected to helping someone else achieve their goals — like when your boss asks you to prepare a presentation for tomorrow’s meeting on short notice.

 

Important tasks are ones that work towards your own goals. If we consistently neglect these, we’ll likely find ourselves stagnant and frustrated. They typically don’t have that strong sense of urgency. Instead, they’re closely linked with our values and vision for our future.

Here’s the matrix:

 

We can use this system to categorize, and then prioritize, any task that comes our way.

 

Urgent and important? Those top your list. Important tasks that are not urgent come next. If you want to achieve your goals and reach greater success, you must dedicate time to the things that are important to you. What we often forget is that not all urgent tasks are important ones. Urgent but not important tasks might be the coworker that pops in just to chat or simple activities that could be delegated. And, of course, those things that are not important and not urgent get moved to the bottom of our list.

 

I use this strategy both to organize my list and to field incoming demands throughout the day. With this system, I can quickly decide where to direct my energy and confidently get to work without worrying about the things I’m not focusing on in that moment. The power of organization enhances both efficiency and concentration. It also means that when those unexpected tasks pop up in the middle of the day, I know where to place them in my prioritized list.

 

This is one of my favorite strategies because it works with real life, even on the busiest of work days. So, the next time you encounter one of those days where the to-do list seems endless, maybe you’ll consider a new motto: WWED — What would Eisenhower do?

 

 

There are myriad benefits to increasing productivity. It can help us work less, enjoy our work more, avoid unnecessary stress, maintain a healthy work-life balance, and excel in our field. Your mission to become more productive doesn’t need to be a solo one. From reading blogs to talking with friends and colleagues, I’ve picked up many strategies that help me to work through my week by connecting with others. One of my favorites ways to gain new knowledge is through podcasts. The convenience and wide variety of information available make them powerhouses for on-the-go professionals who prioritize growth and improvement. Here are a few of my favorite podcasts when it comes to boosting productivity:

Organize Mindfully

Disorganization is a surefire way to sabotage other productivity efforts, so this podcast is a great place to start. So much of our inefficiencies are caused by a lack of organization. From episodes about changing your mindset to making the perfect to-do list, this podcast tackles the issue of organization from all sides. If you’re looking to build a strong foundation for your productivity efforts, I highly recommend tuning in.

The Action Catalyst

In this podcast host, Dan Moore shares his own experiences and interviews top thought leaders to share insights on how we can better use our time. Whether you’re focused on sales goals or life goals, this podcast shares actionable tips to achieve them through better time management. He talks about everything from gratitude and positivity to mental toughness and success principles. This podcast is a great source of inspiration when you’ve lost some of your motivation to be productive.

The Productivityist Podcast

The title says it all, and it’s not lying. This is your one-stop-shop for all things productivity. The recent episode “The Direct Line Between Happiness and Productivity with Will Henshall” is a perfect place to dive in. It offers some useful reminders for why we’re on this quest to be more productive in the first place. I like this podcast because it covers big ideas that are great food for thought while also sharing tips you can implement in your life today.

Beyond the To Do List

The variety of perspectives on this show really makes it worth a listen. They cover things like overcoming busyness, honing your intuition, and increasing focus. With guests from many different industries, you’ll find new ways of looking at how you work through your day. I recommend checking out the episode with Chris Bailey on Hyperfocus, Scatterfocus, and Attention.

Getting Things Done

GTD is a work-life management system designed to bring “chaos to order”. Sound appealing? Whether or not you decide to embrace the entire system, the podcast is full of wisdom on how to work through your day with more clarity, calm, and focus. They get specific, with episodes on managing your inbox, for example, and they also give a broader perspective, with episodes on things like competing priorities. If you want to get things done, this podcast lives up to its name. Give it a listen to start upping efficiency and optimizing your days.

 

When you’re in need of a quick dose of inspiration, a podcast can be just the thing. These are five of my go-to podcasts when I want to kickstart my motivation. Do you have any favorite podcasts that have helped you work more efficiently? Share with us in the comments!

Whether you’re a freelancer, have a remote position, or simply enjoy working outside of the office from time to time, there are some great benefits that come with working from home. With those benefits also come some challenges. As someone who often works from home or while traveling, I feel quite familiar with each. It’s great when you can make your own hours, run out to pick up your kids from school, or work from your favorite cafe. On the flip side, this flexibility can pose a threat to productivity if you’re not cautious. When you delay your work to finish cleaning the kitchen, or you’re simply feeling a bit stir-crazy, the freedom of working remotely can hinder efficiency. Here are a few of the strategies I use to stay productive while working away from the office:

Define Your Schedule

Sure, one of the benefits of working from home is getting to create your own hours. But I find that when I completely ‘wing it’, I’m not at my most efficient. Enjoy this benefit by getting to set your own hours, not make them up on the fly. I find I’m most productive in the morning hours, so it works well for me to get my day started early. For others, they prefer to use those morning hours to get in a workout and do some housework before settling into work. Pinpoint the times of day you’re most productive, and harness those hours for focused work. In addition to a clear start time, it helps to have a clear end time as well. When you work remotely, boundaries between home and work can blur. Leaving a physical office is helpful in transitioning from work-mode to home-mode, so when you don’t have that, it’s important to give yourself a cutoff time to maintain a balance. In addition to your start and end times, clearly-scheduled breaks can keep distractions at bay while.

Multitask Carefully

I won’t say don’t multitask. Working from home does give you some unique opportunities to cross things off your at-home to-do list while also getting work done, but this one can quickly destroy productivity if you’re not careful. So, when you do multitask, do it intentionally. Put in a load of laundry, and then commit to focusing on a single task while it’s in. The specific window of time is great motivation to increase concentration and efficiency. On the other hand, trying to fold that laundry while on the call with a client can rapidly backfire. It’s tough to give 100% of your attention to the call or take notes when you’re engaged with another task. When it comes to multitasking, I make sure I choose my tasks intentionally instead of letting it creep into my work hours without my active choosing.

Create a Workspace

We don’t all have space for a full home-office. If you can’t set up in your own private work zone, you can still designate an area for work. Whether it’s a desk in the living room or a place at the kitchen table, giving yourself a clear place for working is a way to signal to your mind to switch into work mode. Even if you choose to take advantage of working away from the house, you can still be intentional about where you choose to go. Perhaps you have a few cafes that you know to be quiet places that promote productive work — setting up in an environment that feels specific to working helps me stay focused and engaged.

Stay Connected

This might not immediately seem relevant to your at-home productivity, but hear me out. One of the major challenges for those who work from home is that they feel disconnected from a professional community, and that can make you feel less engaged in your work. Whether you have local friends or colleagues who also work from home, or you’re able to communicate online with other coworkers throughout the day, staying connected to that professional community can help keep your motivation up — higher motivation usually equals higher productivity.

 

These strategies help me enjoy the benefits of working away from the office without falling into a productivity pitfall. It requires some self-discipline to manage your time well when working remotely, but when you commit to it, it’s easy to maintain maximum efficiency. If you work from home, either regularly or sporadically, how do you stay productive? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

A strong schedule can be a great time-management tool. But when you haven’t given your schedule the attention it needs, mistakes can sabotage your productivity. We can head into Monday with the best intentions, only to end up feeling exhausted and behind by Friday. Here are a few of the most common scheduling mistakes that can take a real toll on your time-management efforts:

Not recording it

Having a visual of your daily schedule is the best way to maximize its potential. Whether you keep it in a calendar on your phone or written out in a notebook, you want to be able to check in throughout the day. When you keep it all in your head, it’s easy to lose track of specific timeframes and allow distractions to shift your plans. A physical schedule helps to keep you accountable.

Not sticking with it

Speaking of accountability, you need it to reap the benefits of a great schedule. I know this tip may sound painfully obvious, but I think it’s worth noting. How many times have you made a great plan for your day that feels efficient and organized, only to be derailed by 2pm? Utilizing your schedule to its fullest requires a level of commitment from you to follow through with it. Of course, there will be exceptions from time to time, but overall, allowing your schedule to set some clear boundaries and respecting those are key. This is especially true with important independent work that is easy to postpone. If you’ve allotted one hour to work on a new marketing campaign, and a client wants to set up a meeting that day, you can be clear that you aren’t free during the window you’ve set aside for your own work. A schedule will help you value your time and stay in control of how you use it.

Not planning for transition time

When your day requires shifting from task to task, perhaps driving to a meeting and then jumping on a conference call, there’s a lot of physical and mental transitioning required. To keep your schedule feeling realistic, you need to anticipate that transition time. Whether it’s driving to a client and having to wait a few minutes for them to arrive or starting to work on a more creative project and needing a few minutes for your brain to switch gears, planning for transitioning between tasks will help your day flow more efficiently.

Not scheduling the unexpected

Though a back-to-back schedule may look productive, it rarely feels it. How often is it that you’re able to work through your entire schedule without a single interruption? For most of us, it’s pretty rare. If your schedule feels like an overwhelming source of pressure, it’s not going to help you to be more efficient. Instead, your schedule needs to support you. Leave some space in your day for those unexpected things that pop up. Whether it’s a 10-minute chat with a coworker or an emergency meeting with a client, allowing for flexibility makes it that much easier to stay on track.

Not scheduling in breaks

When the goal is to increase productivity, we rarely think to prioritize time spent not working. But that time can actually give you the recharging you need to come back to your work feeling more efficient and focused. This break could simply be your lunch break, or, if you notice an afternoon slump, it could be a brief walk at 3pm. You want to use these breaks intentionally to set you up for success.

 

These scheduling mistakes often stem from a desire to fit more into our day. While it’s a great intention, it can so easily backfire. When planning your schedule for the week and executing that plan, make sure these errors aren’t getting in the way of your productivity.