7 Productivity hacks we can steal from successful entrepreneurs

Social media takes the top spot when you talk about distractions at work. You might just pick your cellphone to scroll through your Twitter feed, and before you even realize it has eaten up more than half an hour of your time. You need to keep such distractions at bay. Switch your mobile to silent mode. Keep it away when you are working. Also, make sure you are not surfing social media sites. If needed, block them.

You cannot think about being productive, if you are not well physically. Considering the sedentary lifestyle habits that we have become accustomed to, it is imperative to get our body moving if we want to lead a disease-free life. Hence, working out becomes important. Workout makes sure proper blood supply is carried out to all parts of your body. So, it won’t get fatigued or stressed easily when you are working. And, you can continue to be productive for longer durations without any physical stress.

There are tens of tasks in your to-do list. So, it becomes imperative to prioritize which tasks require your immediate attention and which are the ones that can be ignored for now. After all, we have just 24 hours in a day and you need to make the most of them. By acting on tasks which will reap out no benefit is a sheer waste of time, when you could have used it for doing something more productive. So prioritize your task list and act accordingly. You can use online tool ProofHub to create your to-do list and allows you to focus on getting things done!

Putting off tasks until the last moment and then spending sleepless nights to finish them on time is a usual scenario. But, why? The reason behind this is not having a pre-defined deadline for the tasks. Not knowing the deadline, then getting an intimation to finish the task in the next couple of days causes panic. And, that leads to project failures. But, when you already know the task is due on a particular day, you can plan your work accordingly to finish things on time.

If you are meeting weekly just to know who has done what in the past week, then stop wasting time on it. You can use an online tool for the same. Try to save as much time as possible in these meetings. Don’t stretch the meetings beyond 20 minutes, as human brain starts to wander after a particular amount of time. That’s why TED talks are never more than 18 minutes in duration.

A project gone haywire, a task getting derailed and many such scenarios can demotivate the team. But, it is your responsibility to keep them motivated. You need to pick not just yourself up, but also the team you are working with when such a scenario arises. Remember, anyone can get demotivated easily when things are going south. But, it takes real courage to pick them up and continue to be productive. And, that’s what you need to do.

Now it might sound quite extreme, but that’s how successful people go about things. I mean, they know it is important to stay focused at work in order to be productive, but at the same time having fun is also important to boost your productivity.

Everyone has their own priorities and own style of working. But, the hacks mentioned above apply to everyone. I mean, excellence is a habit and so is productivity. Like Aristotle said, “We are what we do repeatedly”.