Tips That Will Help You Actually Be Productive in Your Day-to-Day Life

1. Make a plan for the day

Before you even start working on your homework or daily tasks, plan out your day ahead. It doesn’t have to be down to the hour, but make a general outline of what you want your day to look like.  A numbered list of tasks can bring structure to your day and help you recognize what is most important. Color coding your list can aid in organization, and using checkboxes or striking through completed tasks is also very useful when keeping track of what has been and still needs to be completed. Another tip is separating tasks based on types (academic, personal, to-do ASAP, to-do for the future, etc.), which can be super helpful in keeping all of your tasks organized.

2. Keep distractions away from you when doing your work 

We all know that when we hear a buzz come from our phone, ‘quickly checking it’ turns into mindless scrolling on social media or doing some other time-wasting activity to avoid doing our work. A simple way of avoiding this problem is to physically move any distractions. It’s not just your phone that this applies to either; it could be a personal book you’ve been dying to read or a video game that you’ve really been wanting to play. Regardless, keep distractions as far from you as possible while doing work. Simply putting your phone out of your view and reach is just one example of how you can avoid distractions that waste time and are not productive.

3. Utilize the small time chunks 

Ever feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to get all of your work done, even when you are consistently being productive? Funnily enough, we actually have more extra time in our days than we did fifty years ago; we just don’t use the small chunks of time in our day effectively. These small, broken-up pieces of time in our day that are lost to non-productive tasks can also be referred to as “time confetti”, a term created by Brigid Schulte. We tend to use an extra thirty minutes between classes or the fifteen minutes we have before going somewhere doing mindless tasks because we feel that these small chunks of time are not substantial enough to actually be productive. However, if we actually used these pieces of time throughout the day in a productive manner (e.g. answering emails, starting an assignment, or even folding some of the laundry that’s been sitting in your laundry basket) we would actually find that we do have enough time in the day to be productive, with extra time to spare for ourselves so that we aren’t feeling strained for time every single day. If you want to hear more about this concept, Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale University, has an episode in her podcast The Happiness Lab, where she talks about this concept as well as time affluence in general.

4. Stack your tasks on time-consuming tasks

 We have a lot of tasks or time throughout the day where we’re doing something that doesn’t require intentional effort, but we discount it as an opportunity to be productive. However, we can often fit in another low-effort task in these pockets of time to get things done at the same time. For example, if you have a longer bus/shuttle ride, you can do some work that’s easy to do on a laptop or read during the ride. Another example could be listening to a podcast or audio reading while walking somewhere or in the gym. 

5. Take breaks

Taking breaks is a necessary part of being productive, even if you feel like you have a never-ending to-do list of tasks and assignments. We can only work productively for a certain amount of time before our efficiency starts to decrease, whereas a break keeps our efficiency at a more maximal level, meaning you will get more done in the same amount of time when you take breaks. However, you have to make sure the breaks are intentional and don’t drag on too long, and become something that you won’t be able to refocus from.

6. Use a Pomodoro timer 

A Pomodoro timer is a system where you work for a set amount of time and then take a specified length break, and then you repeat that process as many times as you need. Generally, the most common system is working for 25 minutes and taking a 5 minute break, then repeating once or three times for a total of 1 or 2 hours. If you’re struggling to get started on your work, a Pomodoro timer can be perfect because planning to work for just a short period of time can help you get motivated enough to get a lot done. There are also a lot of Pomodoro timers that you can find on YouTube that will alert you when the time is up, and they often have background music or noise to help keep you on task.

7. Micro-productivity

Just as you can break up your productivity time into smaller pieces using a pomodoro timer, you can also do this with a big assignment or task. This is called micro-productivity, and it refers to making a daunting task more manageable by breaking it up into smaller parts. We are more likely to procrastinate when what we need to do seems so overwhelming that we don’t even want to begin working on it. However, by simply taking a bigger task and breaking it down incrementally, the work will seem much more feasible and you will be much more likely to start doing said task without feeling too stressed or overburdened. This can apply to studying loads of material for a big test, writing a lengthy paper, or even starting a time-consuming at-home project. Regardless of what you need to do, this strategy utilizing micro-productivity is a great way to get these intimidating tasks completed.