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With this second of three parts of 12 time management tips to boost your productivity, I will dive deeper into more time management ideas I practice. You might want to start there if you haven’t read the first part.
5. Learn to say no – time management Tips
The fifth time management tip was hard for me to learn. It would help if you remembered to say no to new tasks or distractions. Sometimes you find yourself in a position where you believe you can’t say no.
Saying no means managing expectations. Not only for yourself but also for the people around you. What helped me the most is accepting that whenever I say no to one new thing, I simultaneously say yes to many things.
To give you an example: If I say no to a new potential business, I simultaneously say yes to take care of the business I already have. Growth lies in everything, may it be something new or existing.
Let me tell you – it’s usually way easier to find the growth in things that you already care about than in new things. When I focus on writing within Notes, I decide to only focus on that.
All ideas that cross my mind during the writing process land in a particular “inbox,” my topic collection. That way, I ensure that I don’t forget about minor or significant ideas; on the other hand, I free my mind and focus on writing only.
6. Turn off any notifications
Notifications are sometimes sound, but they distract you from your actual work. Therefore, I turn on the “focus mode” on my phone and my computer and just let specific things come through.
Those can be upcoming meeting notifications or emails marked as urgent. Everything else will get blocked, except for the time I scheduled explicitly to care of emails and Teams messages during the day.
That might sound strange as there are so many different tools to bundle and display your notifications in one place. I believe there is a trend in people who deliberately choose to be connected 24/7 and a minority that works in the same way or a similar way as I do.
I am also convinced that you are way more productive if you turn off any notifications on your devices during focus times. Every notification is a distraction, even if just for a split second.
Before I did that, it happened to me quite often that I just got dragged into the universe of my Outlook, YouTube, WhatsApp account, or any other comparable thing just by receiving one notification.
Those apps do that to get more usage time out of you. You might even believe that it’s essential for you to know about everything that’s going on on those platforms and that you must check on it regularly.
But let me tell you – it is not worth the time. It just distracts you from your final goals.
Why you Should consider deleting your Social Media Profiles
There is, by the way, an excellent book to read: Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier. He wrote the book in 2018, but I still highly recommend to read it.
7. Do the most important thing first
In part 1 of my 12 time management tips to boost your productivity article, I already wrote about to-do lists and how to plan your day. With this 7th tip, I would like to get more specific.
I pick one of the tasks to be the most critical task that I need to get finished at the beginning of each day. That way, I ensure that I feel the joy of the accomplishment at the end of the day for sure.
Maybe you might wonder how I pick my most critical tasks every day.
How to find the most critical task on your specific day?
For me, in 90% of all cases, this is the task that I am least eager to take care of. If there is one task on a day that gives me the feeling that I don’t want to do it, it’s precisely the one I pick to do first.
But why do I do that? First, I think it’s the most crucial task in most cases. Second, finishing something you were reluctant to do gives you an extra good feeling at the end of the day.
Third, it even teaches you the lesson that the rest of the work is, most of the time, not as hard. I highly recommend trying it and seeing whether you feel that same good afterward.
8. Make sure to do something else every day you can look forward to – time management tips
Life does or should not only consist of work. Make sure to incorporate one activity a day that you look forward to. This may be meeting with friends regularly, going to a movie theater, going out for dinner with your family, spending one night a week with your favorite TV show, or anything else.
It should never be related to your daily work. Doing something else every day helps you relax your mind, defocus, and gain more energy.
For me, this one thing is going for a walk every day. I recently changed my routine from an evening walk to a morning walk, which works even better for me.
This might sound boring to you, but I get up at 5 am, prepare a protein drink, and head out of the house. Then, a daily walk between 6 – 7 km for one hour and 20 minutes to one hour and 30 minutes.
I love listening to either one of my favorite podcasts, an audiobook, or just some music. This helps me find some relaxation, get mentally ready for the day, and fully wake up.
I feel less pressure after work by changing this daily routine that I have followed roughly since the beginning of COVID. That teaches me that it’s sometimes worthwhile to change existing habits into something better.
Before I continue to write about more time management tips to boost your creativity, I would be curious about what time management tips you have. You may also consider reading part one or part three of my series.
