How to become more productive with effective practical steps

success of people in their working lives is related to their level of productivity. The more productive a person is in his life, the more he begins his steadfast steps to achieve his goals and develop his work life.

As for the definition of productivity, it is not related to the large number of tasks only, as many think that a productive person is a busy person all the time, and performs several tasks at the same time and does not have time for any other aspect of his life, but this is a wrong belief.

The most productive person is someone who can reach his goals in the least amount of time and effort.

Here comes the important question: What do you do to be more productive? The answer we will talk about in this article, which will discuss how to become more productive, and what are the problems that hinder your productivity? How do you solve it?

We will also recommend some applications that help you be more productive, and some habits that if you acquire them, of course, will affect your productivity.

Effective steps to become more productive

First: Watch your time

There is no doubt that time is the key influencer that helps you be more productive.

Here's an easy and practical way to let you monitor your time and see how you spend your day:

• Get a pen and paper, and create a table divided into 24 points that represent the number of hours of your day.
• Shade the basic hours occupied by daily activities, which are 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work and another hour for various activities.
• You will notice 7 hours of your day without goals, or 50 hours per week with no goals set.
• You can underestimate this number, but if you count 50 hours per week over the average human lifespan, you will find that it is many years of wasted time.

 As the verse said, "A person's heart beats telling him that life is minutes and seconds." Be aware that your life is wasting, and try not to waste your time on something that is not useful, while you are able to pass every minute of your life in a better way that makes you more productive.

Second: Set your goals

According to a scientific study published in 2011 in the journal Applied Psychology, which discusses topics about psychiatry. The results of this study confirmed that setting goals in a clear and detailed manner affects positively and effectively in achieving the goals successfully.

It is worth noting that there is a practical tool that helps you define your goals and priorities, which was invented by the scientist "Paul Mayer", a pioneer in the field of training, and he called it "the circle of life"

This tool is used by scientists in the field of training, and it helps you define your goals by monitoring how you spend your time, and the extent of satisfaction and happiness with every part of your life.

In order to apply it, do the following:

• Get a pen and paper.
• Draw a circle divided into 8 parts. These parts represent the 8 categories of your life who are responsible for your happiness. These eight parts are (the practical side, the financial side, health, family and friends, life partner, self-development, volunteering, entertainment and fun).
• For each part, rate yourself from 1 to 10, and for your evaluation to be effective, answer some questions about each part.

Here are some questions that you have to answer on each side:

The practical side:

• Do you like what you do, and are you satisfied with your current job?
• Do you work in a field that you want to continue and develop yourself in?
• Does it give you a financial return that is sufficient for your needs?

The physical aspect:

• Are all your income sources sufficient for you financially?
• Are you financially dependent on yourself only?
• Do you have any debts?
• Is money the only way to make you happy?

The health aspect:

• To what extent do you care about your mental and physical health?
• Do you feel good about your outward appearance?
• Do you have any chronic diseases?

The side of friends and family:

• Do you have friends you can trust?
• How much time do you spend for your friends?

The life partner aspect:

• Are you satisfied with your partner?
• How much time do you spend with your partner?

The self-development aspect:

• Are you open to trying new and different experiences?
• Are you working hard to develop yourself?

Entertainment side:

• Do you have any hobby?
• Are you making some time for your hobbies and entertainment?

Voluntary side:

• Do you have the trait of helping others?
• Do you have an opportunity to help others without affecting the rest of your life?

After answering the previous questions, rate yourself for each part.

If the score from 8 to 10 means that you are satisfied with this part, but keep developing it.

If it is from 7 to 5, this means that you need to devote more time to developing this part.

 If from 1 to 4 it means that you are falling short, and you need a specific plan to work on that part, because it may cause you some problems in your life and hinder you from being more productive.

Then, analyze the result by answering some of the following questions:

• What are the lowest points?
• What would be your ideal result for each part? It doesn't have to be a perfect score of 10. It can be less depending on your priorities.
• What is the result that you want to reach after several months or a year have passed?

In the end, you now have a detailed evaluation of your life, which makes you reach the stage of balance, and this is the main goal of the "circle of life" experience.  

Meaning that if you spend most of your time working, the higher points will be on the work side and the financial side, and thus you can find yourself falling short with parents, life partner and volunteering.

This creates a defect, and you may underestimate this at first because your current priorities are your work, but over time this will also affect your work and be less productive at work, because you do not achieve balance in your life in general, this balance that makes you more productive.

Third: Follow the method of task management box

This fund is to remedy this defect that I found when implementing the previous steps related to the life cycle. They are steps that help you arrange your priorities in a way that enables you to carry out all the tasks required of you, and to achieve balance in all aspects of your life, which ultimately qualifies you to be more productive.

First, set specific appropriate steps for each part according to your priorities, and you can do so by using the method of former US President "David Eisenhower", who is the 34th President of the United States of America.

As he was one of the most productive people, and even managed to maintain it for several years. David used to follow the box-task approach, which is about categorizing your life's tasks into four types.

You can classify these tasks by making a square divided into four parts, namely:

• The first part represents the important and urgent tasks.
• The second part represents the important non-urgent tasks.
• The third part represents urgent unimportant tasks.
• The fourth part represents unimportant tasks that are not urgent.

The advantage of this tool is that it helps you to divide your time in a balanced manner, and determine the most important priorities of your day, but the advice of the psychologist “David Primack” “that during the implementation of important urgent tasks, you must first perform the difficult tasks, then follow the easy tasks that you love in order to have an incentive to complete The rest of the tasks ”.

 To prove this theory, studies have already emerged of workers in a fast food restaurant with many urgent tasks. And their superiors promised them that if they accomplished these tasks well, they would move them to places with the tasks they liked the most.

Indeed, the result was that they complete their tasks to the fullest, and in less time, because they are motivated, but beware of multitasking at the same time.

You are deceiving yourself, and you will immediately become distracted, and sometimes lazy, and not complete many tasks with equal perfection, unlike if you focus your focus on one task and when you finish it you move on to the second.

So we can say that multitasking reduces your productivity by at least 90%. The bottom line is now that you have set goals, set priorities, and set a plan with specific deadlines, so what if you do not become more productive after all this arrangement, look for what hinders your productivity.

The most important barriers to productivity and how to deal with them

You may encounter some obstacles on the way to achieving your goals, and these obstacles prevent you from becoming more productive.

Among the most important of these obstacles:

1. Procrastination

It is a form of failure of self-regulation, which is an irrational delay, although there are potential negative consequences.

But what are the reasons that make you resort to procrastinating your tasks?

There are psychological reasons and scientific explanations for this. These psychological reasons include:

• lack of self confidence.
• Fear from the start.
• The accumulation of tasks, which may cause you stress.
• Hesitation and you may have a hindrance in making decisions.
• Striving for perfection, waiting for ideal conditions, and that certainly leads to continuous postponement.

This has been scientifically explained that procrastination and the feeling of not wanting to complete a certain task at the time you set for yourself, stimulates in your mind pain centers, which actually translates to feeling pain.

Thus the mind tries to distract you from that pain with a fun idea, which is to delay and find a fun alternative, such as browsing social networking sites on your phone, taking a sleep, or eating some delicious foods and more.

 All of these alternatives are nothing but a waste of your time, and a temporary feeling of comfort and pleasure, and you must practice them within the time of entertainment and fun, but you still have to complete this task, what is the solution?

Treat procrastination

 Beginning of solving any problem identified, and recognized. First, determine the reason for the procrastination. For example, if the task is large and takes a long time, break it down and break it up into small tasks.

These small tasks are divided into fewer times, and with the completion of each small task, you will feel achievement and approaching the big task.

And that definitely makes you give yourself a chance to take simple steps if you suffer from low self-confidence, hesitation, and fear from the start, and with the exercise of tasks you will gain flexibility and become more productive.

Be forgiving of yourself if there is any wasted time on your journey to complete the task, which will help you let go of perfection.

On the contrary, be careful to reward yourself if you complete the task on time, so that you have an incentive to complete the rest of your tasks, and this makes us move on to the second productivity hurdle, which is the lack of motivation.

2. Lack of motivation

Encouraging yourself with incentives is a very important factor for the continuity of productivity, and in order to accomplish any task it is necessary to have an incentive to encourage you to complete it.

Psychologists have divided motivation into 3 components:

• Activation.
• perseverance.
• Intensity.

Activation is represented in stimulating the mind and the decision to act, and perseverance is represented in persistence and continuity, and the intensity is represented in the amount of focus during the task.

If there is an incentive, your productivity increases dramatically.

Treating the lack of stimulus to production

Identify a reason for every action you do, and always ask yourself why are you doing it? If there is a cause, there is an incentive to start.

Overcome boredom, speak positive words to yourself that encourage him, combat any negative feelings within you, and don't forget the reward element that makes you more motivated.

Productivity Elements

Productivity is divided into 3 components:

First time

Many of us complain that he does not have time, but this is a wrong belief. If you organize your time, and limit the number of hours available for work, for example, hours of self-development and so on, you will get excellent results.

It is also important that you identify the times when you are most focused, and make it specific for your business to be most productive.

Second, energy

 Your daily energy is affected by two types of factors, psychological or mental factors, and other physical factors.

Physical factors are affected by sleeping for enough hours, healthy food, exercising, and psychological factors are also affected by news, and the content that you follow daily on social media.

 You should avoid following bad news and negative content at the beginning of your day, because that will return to you negative energy, deplete your mental energy, and reduce your productivity. Social media can be used to follow meaningful content that helps you develop in your field.

Third, focus

Focus is divided into two types:

First, focus on the minute hour level

You should focus on one task only, and the next task until the end of the day.

You have to understand very well that distraction reduces productivity, and the problem of distraction can be remedied by using the 10-minute rule. Which is to test your focus for a period of 10 to 15 minutes, during which you focus on doing only one thing, and avoid any distractions.

If you do this simple exercise every day, of course you will become more focused and productive, and don't forget the Pomodoro style that I mentioned to you just before.

Second, focus on the level of months and years

In order to increase your focus over a longer period of time, try not to jump between many projects or tasks at the same time, even if you encounter difficulty in this in a project or task, be patient and persistent, as long as you are confident that the project will benefit you and plan it correctly.

Conclusion Focused on one goal and then moved to the other so that it becomes more productive, and does not fall into the distraction trap as the psychologist Francis Booth called it in his book "The Distraction Trap", so our minds today are infected with what is known as the Monkey mind.

It is the term monkey mind, and it is just an analogy to the huge amount of distraction that we are exposed to on a daily basis in recent times, by moving between social media applications on the phone.

How do you get out of the dispersion trap?

• Set social media at a specific time during the day outside work time.
• Turn off all digital distractions while you work.
• Use apps that help you focus and manage your time smart.

Apps that help you be more productive

 There are many applications that help you be more productive, including:

1. Strict Work flow implementation or property

It is an add-on to the browser through the computer temporarily blocking websites that could distract you and consume your time. This app works for the Pomodoro technique, as it blocks websites for 25 minutes, which is the time you take to do your task.

All you have to do is specify the application sites that distract you, and there are also some applications on the phone that do the same task as the App lock application, and of course that will make you more focused and thus more productive.

There are also applications that help you list your daily tasks, so you should not rely on you knowing these tasks without writing them, because this is likely to forget some of them.

On the other hand, writing tasks will help you not to miss much of the fun when you evaluate your performance at the end of the day and find that you have done most of your daily tasks.

2. Microsoft to do application

This is one of the tasks listing applications, which includes the daily repetition feature, and if your task includes several steps, you can write step-by-step.

You can also plan for the next day or the entire month, the due date feature to assign a specific time to each task, as well as the reminder alert option.

3. Tick Tick App

This application features the Pomodoro technique that helps you get rid of procrastination, as it is a method based on dividing your tasks into small parts or small sessions, each session that takes 25 minutes, then 5 minutes rest, and after 4 sessions prolongs the rest period.

It's a practical app to keep you focused and not let boredom permeate your tasks. Many business owners when they tested this feature showed effective results in raising their productivity.

The application shows you in each task how much time it took, and how many sessions you spent to complete each task, so that you will be more aware of your time, and do not forget to stay away from distractions during work until the experience ends successfully, and so that you are more productive.

As Napoleon said, "Any goal is just a dream, if you don't set a specific time for the goal."

Conclusion

Pay attention to the health triangle, represented by sleep, healthy food, and exercise. Many believe that a more productive person is a less sleepy person, but this is a misconception.

Because if you keep enough sleep daily, it will make you more energy and productive, and studies have shown that sleeping 7 to 9 hours a day helps you increase focus, and improves your health.

As for sports, no matter how busy you are daily, keep setting aside even a little time a day for some exercise, and try to replace the elevator with going up the stairs daily, and in order to complete the health triangle you must pay attention to eating healthy food, and of course if you become accustomed to these habits you will notice an effective change in your productivity.

 And because you deserve to be more productive, always keep trying and not giving up, and we promise you that if you follow what we have presented in this article from practical steps based on the experiences of psychologists and specialists, you will start in the first step on your way to becoming more productive.