5 Sure-fire Ways To Boost Your Personal Productivity

Productivity is a very important factor in our daily lives, especially in this Internet age where countless interruptions compete for our attention, ranging from social media to mobile messaging.

When our productivity suffers, we are bound to get stressed mainly due to a failure to accomplish what we set out to do, and this does not make things any better.

However, this can only happen if we are able to measure the extent to which we are being unproductive. This article reveals 5 sure-fire ways to boost your productivity and increase the efficiency with which you accomplish tasks every day.

1.  Create deadlines

If you have to keep looking for inspiration before you start working on a particular task, you are dealing with a case of procrastination in disguise.

This is worse when you are your own boss and you do not have to be accountable to anyone but yourself.

You can use the carrot and stick approach to stay self-motivated.

Make sure there are self-imposed consequences for failing to meet deadlines and plan to reward yourself when you accomplish a task in its allotted time.

2.  Strike a balance between learning and doing

The most successful people in the world are not the ones who know the most about everything, but rather those who take action on the little they know.

Putting into practice what you already know will essentially get you to where you want to be.

Learning by doing is one of the most effective ways to get out of the trap of being a perpetual student.

You may read as many textbooks as you possibly can about how to play guitar but until you actually strap one over your shoulder and strike a chord, you will never really learn how to play.

3.  Improve on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses

Unfortunately, we all have only one lifetime, and there are only so many skills you can master.

You can create leverage by looking for those who have mastered what you are not good at and achieve your objectives with their help.

Attempting to strengthen your weaknesses will only make you a mediocre in every skill you acquire, and will slow down your progress.

Focus on what you do best and aim to be better at it. When you flow with the tide, you will soon discover that the sailing is smoother.

4.  Stop being a perfectionist

I struggled with being a perfectionist for a long time and I only started to let go when I noticed simple tasks were taking longer than they should have.

If you insist on being a perfectionist, chances are that you’ll never get any project off the ground because nothing will ever be good enough.

In extreme circumstances, you could yet find yourself spending all day arranging your workspace and doing other trivial activities of no significant importance.

Interestingly, you will still get exhausted at the end of the day without having achieved anything.

Don’t spend time creating a favorable environment that will lead you to confuse activity with productivity.

5.  Live your life for what is important not what is urgent

This is very good advice from the late Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

You will never achieve your greatest potential for as long as your attention is completely directed towards what is urgent at the expense of what is important.

One of the easiest ways to determine what is really important to you is to ask yourself this question; if you had more time, what would you do with it?

Your answer to this question will give you clues as to what is important to you, but for some reason you cannot get around to giving it your full attention.

When you are engaged in an activity you enjoy, time goes by quickly.

For instance, if you enjoy watching TV all day, before you know it the day is gone and you were indeed involved in some activity. The question is… were you being productive?