How to Be 10x More Productive

Do you find often hard to be more productive in these times? have you found yourself struggling with the new digital era and its several ways to keep you distracted and unfocused from what you really want to accomplish?

If you are currently experience huge problems focusing and getting more things done, this post will help you to discover what things are affecting your productivity.

We are currently being overwhelmed by the many distractions we face on a daily basis: things like #Instagram, #Snapchat, #Facebook, #Pinterest, etc. All these social media site plus, TV shows (for the ones that still watch TV) and the new biggest distractor '#Netflix' or '#Youtube', etc) These things are all consuming our time on a daily basis. There are even studies about how often people are surrounded by all these distractors and the statistics. can be extremely shocking.

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time' is like saying, 'I don't want to.” ― Lao Tzu

'In the 1970s, scientists did an experiment on the effect of speed on time. They put atomic clocks on fast-moving planes and had them fly around the earth twice. When compared with the same atomic clocks sitting on earth, the clocks on the planes slowed down. In other words, not as much time had passed on the planes. Once again, time slows down when you're going really fast (close to the speed of light)'. (Time Dilation: Study.com)

Have you ever felt the time is passing very quickly and often find yourself like not having enough time to do your daily tasks? well, believe or not, the more you do, the more time you have for to do other things, it might seem weird to say it, but I find often myself doing nothing and time going in a sight but when I do more things I feel my day is longer.

Before giving you an answer to the title, let's review what is keeping us off from actually being productive. We need to tackle the subject and this way understand what are the things that unconsciously people often face on a daily basis that are pulling us away from being productive.

Procrastination

Have you ever heard of the word 'Procrastination' probably yes, or not, this term basically refers to the action of taking a hold on any aspect from our lives.

For instance; You know you have to prepare your homework but instead you get caught by anything that distracts you, for example, some social media sites, unconsciously after a few minutes, you find yourself watching some Youtube videos when you were just trying to study.

Another example could be when you work from home, yes, I believe being productive for someone whose duties and responsibilities come from the comfort of their home can be easily stopped by anything; children, housework, food, neighbors, internet itself (I refer mostly to social media and stuff). A lot f things right? don't worry... there are actually some apps you can find to fight the last things mentioned. Apps like; #SelfControl, #Freedom, or #Focus that can be of a great help.

So now that we know what could be a problem is when we can fight towards it. And you might be wondering, well that's something I already know and I have my ways to battle this.

That's ok! I know some of you have already dealt with stuff like that, but don't lose a chance to learn something new. I promise it will be worth it.

I'm giving you now 5 tips I use daily to find #Procrastination and how to be more productive.

The Five Tips

1. Laziness

Yeah, that's right when we talk about Procrastination or when we put off things, it can be simply because we feel lazy to do it, we need to realise how harmful this can be for our goals or future plans.

Once we tell our brains ''I'll do that later'' or ''I don't have time now'' we are unconsciously leaving things undone and giving us an acceptable excuse so that we can continue being lazy or simply avoid doing what we really have to do.

Now that we know the first factor which is for me what we usually do when we start to procrastinate, I'll give a simple trick to short this problem out. The trick is simple, and the problem actually really easy to address, you'll think is really funny or is just common sense. 

If you have every day that little voice telling you always ''You have to do it, you have to do it'' Wouldn't you be happier if you could get just rid of it? well, my friend, in this consist my first tip. Laziness or loitering is mitigated by doing what you have to do. So basically when you chose to do the task, you just get rid of it in the moment, therefore, the procrastination is over. Simple right?

2. Identify Your Time-Killers

When you start with a really important task, say is part of your project or goals. There is always a moment where unconsciously we start working on something that we weren't supposed to do or we simply start checking things that take us apart from our actual real task. Think for a moment, when you work from home and you need to write an article (like I'm doing now) I write from home so I don't have anybody checking on me or anything distracting me, besides internet.

So if I'm working on a report or not, the feeling of writing the report or performing my task should be a priority, even though I know I might get distracted on internet the goal is to identify what the problem is and face it on time.

That's right, I often write, so sometimes is hard not to check my #Email, #Facebook, #Instagram, #Blog or anything you could imagine of.  So now that we know what are those time killers or distractions we understand there's a problem and we need to address it right away. I often use a time tracker so when I know I have to work for a report I calculate the time I want to spend on it and then before getting into the actual task of writing my report I start the tracker and only when the time is up, then I move onto the next task.

And believe it or not, this incredibly helps you to be more productive and to really achieve your goals. In addition like I said before, there are many apps you can use to instantly block social media websites or any website that could be a distraction for you.

3. Productive Time

I always felt that as we grow or they way we are raised by our parents or even the time we spent in the school really create who we are. I am telling you this because I remember back in the time I was at school, I studied like 9 years out of 10 during the afternoon and I usually could slept until late morning. Therefore, this has created on me a pattern that I just believe is my productive time. 

There are many people that believes they can be more productive during the morning as many others during the afternoon, I'm not that kind of people, I usually tend to be more productive during the evening-night since is the time I feel more awake and interested for doing something.

So my friend always try to work during what you think is your productive time and then use it as much as you can to perform those task, duties or goals that you have in mind and I assure you it will be a lot easier for you to be more productive cause your brain recognizes its own time as your top time of the day where it can function better.

4. The Problem with Multitasking

We are not machines therefore we can't really multitask. The problem with really focusing on something is what people often miss understand with multitask, our brain works in some manners that allows us to really commit and focus on a single task.  The ability to truly multitask is I believe only available but from machines like: computers, mobile phones, etc. 

The problem with switching your attention from one task to the another is that your brain takes some time to really get back to what you were working on before once you go back and forward, so technically, you don't realise but you really lose a lot of time trying to get back into the flow state of what you were doing before. And also is proved that multitasker often does more mistakes that people that focus on a single thing.

If you wanna try it yourself try to write a simple paragraph, while you talk on the phone with someone, but! the subject of the talk and the paragraph must be completely different. 

So in order to avoid the temptation of multitasking is to really commit to one single task, so restring yourself from doing many different tasks and you'll see how your productivity levels will rise.

The key is too low down your actions.

It is very important to say that if you have mastered anything you believe you're good at and that you ca actually do this while doing other things say cooking, signing or anything you think. Well there are always exemptions.

5. Plan Prior Action

The plan prior action or #PPA as I like to call it, is basically to plan your task with a previous time picking up the most important and the relevant. You can start low, let's say you have more than ten things to get done within one week, well simply plan to achieve three things each day and at the end of the week you'll even find yourself having some free time.

The importance about planning things with some time is that we really define what are the most important tasks, goals or ideas we want to achieve. Be realistic with yourself if you have one thing to get done that you know will take more time to address well, I usually do what I call ''begin big'', start by working on your biggest or toughest task and this way you actually feel better once you're done with that because the rest of the task will be easier to do. Other tips to plan is writing down on a paper your 3 tasks of the day so that you can keep them with you throughout the day and never really forget what you have to do.

Lastly I often send an email to myself stating what I have to do on the next day this way when I wake up and check my email I will know what I have to do.

All right so I hope you can find these 5 tips very useful. I promise when you start putting them into practice you'll see how your productivity will rise.

It's important as well to understand that we are all humans and as so, we need to leave some spare time during the day to enjoy and live we always think about working or our duties but we forget about our joy and that we also have feelings and we need to be kind with ourselves.