It turns out that I am a pretty ambitious person, who happens to exist in an extremely lazy person’s body.
I try to be as efficient as possible because being more productive some of the time means I can do less the rest of the time.
And yes, I’ve had seasons where I’ve worked every minute to get stuff done, but that is not my happy space and it’s fortunately not where I am right now.
In case you are also looking to maximise output with minimum effort, these are my tips for being more productive:
Do less
The absolute number one thing to improve your productivity is to do less. I LOVED this podcast between Josephine Brooks and Ruth Poundwhite, where Josephine summed it up perfectly. The point of being more productive is to be less busy, not to cram loads of stuff into a small amount of time.
In order to do this, you need to focus in on what is actually making a difference to what you do, and where you can cut back. Sounds hard, because everything is important, right? Well, no. It’s not. But establishing what is important can be tricky.
And I don’t just mean this in terms of work. Our house is an absolute pit of despair of untidiness, and it’s because right now I prioritise other things over tidying. My kids’ drawers are have no order at all, because I do not want to spend even one minute folding their clothes right now. It is not essential to me, so I don’t do it.
Not everyone could live that way, and I go back and forth on whether this is a good strategy, but it means I have back the 10-15 minutes a day (or more!) I would spend tidying, so it works for me.
What is essential to you? Bin the rest. If this sounds interesting to you, and you want to read more, I HIGHLY recommend this book (affiliate link).
Get organised
It doesn’t really matter if you use a notebook or a digital solution or a paper wall planner. The key thing is to have a sense of what the entire list of things you need to do is, and what the absolute priorities are.
A Trello board helps me keep on top of what I want to get done today: what’s coming up, what my latest successes have been, content ideas, money-making ideas and things that I’d love to do one day but can’t give attention to right now.
I love Trello because you can move things easily from list to list, but also frequently use a pen and paper when I’m feeling overwhelmed. It makes it easier to get the thoughts out of my brain.
Batch your content
Whether it’s getting the ideas out of my head for content or business ideas or even the braindump, I am a big believer in batching creative thinking work together. If your brain is in the right space for it, maximise that!
I also recommend batching longer form content, too. If you’re in writing mode, it’s much easier to just keep writing and get content ready and scheduled in.
That said, I personally prefer to have the ideas and outline batched and ready. But when it comes to the writing, I like to do that as and when a) I need it and b) I have time to create it.
Embrace your cycle
I’ve spoken about this before, but this makes so much difference for brainstorming and creating new content ideas! I am so much more productive when I allow myself to work on the types of projects that make sense for where I am in my cycle.
If you want to read more about this, take a look at Kate Northrup’s Do Less book, which goes into it in a fair amount of detail. I would also highly recommend signing up to my co-mentor Jen’s Facebook group, which is all about cyclical working.
Get an accountability partner
And finally, get someone who asks if you’ve done the things you said you were going to do! Whether that’s finding a co-mentor, hiring a mentor (like me! Hi!) or a coach or joining an accountability group.
There are a lot of different ways you can find some accountability. It really does make a big difference!
What are your top productivity tips?
How do you get stuff done?
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