Unlocking productivity isn't about working harder, but smarter. Discover the three pivotal strategies that can transform your efficiency levels, streamline your workflow, and empower you to achieve more in less time. Let's redefine productivity together.
Why Working Harder isn’t the Answer
It’s hard to connect your input, the time you spend working, with the output, the finished project.
- In reality, working more hours is often just a way to prove to others, rather than yourself, that you’re “getting things done.”
Work smarter, not harder
You need some hard work to be productive, just like you need some exercise to be healthy, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
- The relationship between how much work you are putting in and your actual productivity over the course of a typical work week looks like this:
- After two to four hours a day or 10 to 20 hours per week, your productivity starts to drop off, and you reach a threshold where you can’t do any more high-level creative work but still have the energy to do managerial and administrative tasks.
Use Software and Automation
Leverage software and automation to get more done by automating boring or repetitive tasks.
- Some examples
- Readwise.io
- Calendly
- Lastpass
- Filters in your email to send non-essential emails to a separate folder
- Text expander to save commonly used phrases
- Rescue Time to measure how much time you are spending on different sites
Prioritize Tasks by Energy Level
One way to work smarter, not harder is to plan your days and weeks around your natural rhythms
- If you’re a morning person, don’t leave the most important work for the afternoon and if you’re a night owl, don’t feel guilty about sleeping later and staying up at night to get your work done
Courage: The Real Way to Work Smarter, not Harder
Being courageous is the real hard work we need to do, rather than just “clocking in more time.”
- Courage is choosing to work less because we are confident in our own productivity time.
- One of the main reasons we work too hard is that we are using that hard work to make up for a lack of courage
Learn New Skills
Another way to work smarter is to develop new skills that let you accomplish more in less time.
- Reading books gives you explicit knowledge, the knowledge that can be readily articulated and verbalized. It does not give you tacit knowledge.
- You’ll never learn how to be a productive guitar player until you develop tacit knowledge through practicing the guitar. By combining the two – reading books and studying your field and actually practicing it, you can gain the type of tacit knowledge that will make you more effective
Use Popular Productivity Hacks
Find an accountability buddy
- Create a morning ritual to standardize the first thirty minutes to an hour of your day
- Use the Pomodoro Technique to break your work into chunks
- At the end of the day, make a list of your least valuable tasks and ask: “Is it profitable?” If not, stop doing it. If yes, can you delegate it?
- Make a “Not To Do List” which lists all the things you frequently waste time on
