How to manage everything and increase productivity: tips

Lying on the couch, watching TV, cracking nuts, spitting at the ceiling and at the same time being happy, successful, wealthy and satisfied with life - only cartoon characters can afford this, but no more. The frantic pace of life, a lot of things to do and responsibilities, responsibility, study, work - this is what a modern person has to deal with every day, especially for those who want to achieve new heights and better results.

That’s why talking about how to keep up with everything will be very helpful. This article will be useful for a student and a manager, a mother with children, a freelancer, a loader in a warehouse and a businessman, and even someone who is still in school. Everything you learn about will help you put your affairs and personal life in order, stop being a squirrel in a wheel of endless rush jobs and deadlines, learn to build your day and even your life so that there is time for everything, and you at the same time felt full of strength and energy. Let's start!

In general, the question of how to manage to get everything done is quite extensive. Answering this question, we can say a lot of interesting things. But we will limit ourselves to three main sections:

The first section will be devoted to personal time management
Second section – daily routine
The third section is about useful life hacks for everyday use.

Lyrical introductions are already unnecessary here, so let’s get down to business right away.

Personal time management

As we all have known for a long time, time is the most valuable resource we have (besides health, of course). But we cannot reverse time, which is why its value increases significantly.

Any person has every right to distribute his time not only as he wants, but also in such a way that it has practical benefits. However, some people manage to do all the important things and still leave time for rest and entertainment, while others do not have time to do anything and cannot afford to relax. Why, because everyone has 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes in a watch?!

And the answer is simple to the point of banality - people who do not have time to do anything completely do not know how (or do not want) to manage their time. In the literal sense, of course, you won’t be able to manage time, but everyone can learn to use it rationally (and manage it in this sense). There is even a special discipline for this – time management.

Time management is the accounting and planning of time. In our case (since we are talking about personal time), this is accounting and planning of our personal precious time resource. Thanks to them, we can structure our work and non-work time with amazing ease. But the even greater magic of time management is that you can work not “out there somewhere,” but right now - arranging things for days and weeks in the right order.

Many people believe that time management is the prerogative of managers or executives, but this is not at all true. It is useful and easy to master not only at work, but also at home. Time management will help a young mother to have time to look after her child and keep herself in great shape (in fact, this applies to people with children in general), it will allow a student to have time to prepare for a session without compromising meetings with friends and romantic dates, it will give a student at school the opportunity to do homework and play football in the yard.

To put it simply, time management will benefit anyone who wants to get their studies, work, life, and even relationships with people around them in order; who wants to become more efficient, productive and successful.

If you want to know how to get everything done, you need to understand the main principle of time management. According to him, time should be measured not in minutes and hours, but in events and actions. It is this original perception of time that will give you a feeling of fullness in life and an understanding of how to live for your own benefit.

Make it a rule to spend your time and energy on what you really need: what leads to success, moves you towards your goal, expands your boundaries. We also recommend mastering three useful skills:

Learn to prioritize (read our articles “The Art of Prioritization” and “The Wheel of Life”)
Learn how to set goals correctly (you can find out how to do this in our articles “Personal goal setting” and “10 steps to achieve goals”)
Learn to plan competently (we talked about this in our articles “Effective Planning”, “Planning the Week”, “How to Plan for the Year Ahead” and “How Planning Will Change Your Life”)

In addition, we highly recommend taking our free course “Time Management: Time Management” to master this art in detail.

Well, in conclusion, here’s what American motivational speaker, time management guru and self-development expert Brian Tracy thinks about how to keep up with everything.

Where does unused energy go?

Self-flagellation
Self-criticism,
Wasting energy on phone calls
Serving without a purpose on the Internet

How do you understand that you have “wasted” your energy without spending it on business? At the end of the day, in such cases, a devastated state sets in.

Common mistakes when working with energy:

You poured 5 cups of coffee into yourself to complete tasks before the deadline and increase productivity, but you still haven’t got the hang of it. Concentration did not come. A “glass state” set in, a feeling of guilt came, and with this feeling you eventually went to bed.

It all affects your next day. starting from the psycho-emotional state and ending with the physical (remember about 5 mugs of coffee, they are still in you, but if it ends, your sleep will be restless).

Lifehacks to increase productivity

The reason for lack of time is not always the inability to manage this time. Very often a person simply does not have enough strength to accomplish everything he has planned. Even if you have amazing motivation, even if you are full of enthusiasm, even if your day is scheduled minute by minute - but what does it matter if your head is no longer cooking anything, when your brain refuses to serve you faithfully?

So much has already been said that the life of a modern person is an endless stream of information, a lot of events, and overwhelming stress. We will not go into lengthy reflections, but simply summarize: our performance tends to zero under the influence of all these factors. And to be able to live at all, you need to keep yourself and your health in order.

You probably know that, for example, a little chocolate helps lift your mood, increase vitality, and improve brain activity. So, eating a chocolate bar is already a life hack - a trick that allows you to become more effective. But we will not insist on chocolate, but will give some other tips.

Take breaks

Thinking about how to keep up with everything, many people begin to work tirelessly. But this is fundamentally wrong, because the brain (and the body in general) becomes overtired and performance decreases. Therefore, while working during the day, be sure to take breaks. Take some time to rest to allow your brain to rest, recover and return to normal. Neglecting rest can knock anyone down, and even lead to serious illnesses. Don't forget this.

Have a productive rest

A logical continuation of the previous point: spend your leisure time so that thoughts about work fade into the background. You know the saying: “When you come to work, leave your home problems at home”? It’s the same here: during non-working hours, disconnect from work worries. Watch a movie, listen to music, play with your child, take a walk, do housework, but just leave your work alone - it won’t run away. Otherwise, you will not be able to relax even after two weeks of vacation, because... the brain simply won’t relax, which means you won’t rest either.

Get enough sleep

And again about rest - sleep as much as you should - about 7-8 hours a day. This time is optimal for proper rest and recuperation. Of course, it may be problematic for a young mother with children, a student before a session, or an always busy businessman to do this, but “beauty requires sacrifice.” How to have time to do everything - sleep normally. In addition, the morning, as they say, is wiser than the evening, and when you wake up, you can look at everything with a fresh head, including understanding when and what is best to do that day.

Eat right

Another component of the lifestyle of a productive person who always has time for everything is proper nutrition. The body must receive the required amount of vitamins, minerals and trace elements to ensure its stable functioning. The brain “loves” potatoes, legumes, nuts, sugar and starch in acceptable limits (in fact, we have an article “Foods for the Brain” and even a whole course “Proper Nutrition”). Here we will say that you should not abuse food - overeat, but you can eat in different ways, and if you are very interested, read about alternative nutrition concepts. By providing your body with all the necessary resources, you will be able to remain cheerful and active throughout the day, and how to manage everything will no longer be a problem for you.

Breathe and see

To improve brain function and, accordingly, become a more productive and successful person, it is advisable to resort to aromatherapy and color therapy from time to time. In the first case, you simply buy yourself an aroma lamp and several types of essential oils that stimulate brain activity and intellectual activity, for example, eucalyptus, lemon, basil, lavender, jasmine, rosemary or peppermint oils. In the second case, it is recommended to look at a certain color for several minutes during the day: red helps to cheer up, orange stimulates the production of joy hormones, yellow increases efficiency and perseverance, green gives optimism, blue activates thought processes, blue treats addictions, and purple has a positive effect on thoughts and emotions.

Work physically

If you really want to find time for everything, then include in this “everything” physical activity - an integral part of the life of any productive person. You can’t work with your head all the time, and sometimes you need to work with your hands. What about the arms – the legs, the shoulders and the whole body in general. Exercise in the morning, training in the evening, installation work on weekends, football, hockey, boxing, tennis - any physical activity will benefit you. It improves blood circulation and metabolism, restores old neural connections and creates new ones, kneads joints and prevents the accumulation of salts and other harmful substances, including toxins, in the body. And during working hours, you can do facial yoga or give yourself a head massage.

read books

Spend some time every day reading useful and interesting books. It is best to give yourself at least 30 minutes for this activity. While reading, a person is distracted, relaxes, and improves the performance of his brain. If you want to understand even better how to keep up with everything, you can find (buy or download) books on this topic. In addition, reading promotes better concentration, development of imagination, analytical and imaginative thinking, broadening one's horizons, self-development and personal growth. Setting aside half an hour to read a book is easy, and if you add it to your to-do list, it will add another completed task to your list and you will feel good about yourself again.

Cut off the excess

Above, we talked almost all the time about useful things, including useful habits, but said very little about harmful ones. Let's fix it. Bad habits, especially those that cause addiction, not only often have a detrimental effect on health, but also take up the lion's share of time. Because of this, the amount of work that we could do decreases, efficiency decreases, and attention becomes unfocused. One thing clings to another, and instead of doing some important task, we go to the smoking room, run to the coffee machine, and quietly chew a bun. If you don’t want to harm your health and at the same time do more, quit bad habits and spend more time on healthy ones.

Calculate your forces

To achieve more, do not try to embrace the immensity, i.e. Don’t take on more tasks than you can handle, otherwise you will be faced with an Everest of tasks that you will never climb even with the help of a hundred Sherpas. Any work process should also be optimized: follow the plan, don’t get distracted, let everything you need always be available. Look for opportunities to reduce time for completing simple tasks and performing habitual actions. Beware of the accumulation of unfinished tasks - do everything on time, do not put it off until later. If necessary, don't be embarrassed, ashamed or afraid to ask for help. Help is good in almost any matter. Delegate authority whenever possible.

Use gadgets

Modern mobile devices do not exist just to scroll through Instagram, take selfies and play Fruit Ninja. Laptops, tablets, smartphones, and iPhones have many functions designed to serve a person’s benefit. Multifunctional calendars, task planners, reminders, alarm clocks, electronic readers, etc. There are also a lot of cool applications that allow you to solve the problem of how to manage to do everything. Among them are Clear, Rescue Time, Wunderlist, Clara, Workflow, Trello, Timely, Pocket and others. So don’t turn your gadget into a tool for “sticking”, it’s better to make it an assistant, because it will help a student in learning, a student in class, a person with children, etc. Just think about how you can use the same smartphone wisely, and a lot of ideas will come to your mind.

Reward yourself

Motivation is the engine, but sometimes a person is exhausted because his actions do not provide feedback. So what does it mean to cross things off your list every day? What is a small step towards a goal that you decided to achieve only in a year? Endless tasks can drain all your energy if you don't see progress. To motivate yourself when you feel like you're losing motivation, reward yourself. Give yourself small gifts. You’ve completed all your tasks for the day early - go to the cinema, worked “without jambs” for a week and managed to do everything - go to the store and buy yourself a cool new jacket or boots that you’ve been wanting for a long time, passed the test - go snowboarding! You can come up with anything - if you have the desire. The main thing is to understand why you are doing anything at all. Find what inspires you and strive for it. Any job can bring joy and pleasure if you know how to ignite yourself to keep moving.

In fact, it’s not so much important how to do everything, but why to do it. Your own goals are your motivation. By any means, remind yourself what you want to achieve, what the meaning of your life is, why you are ready to get up at six in the morning and rush headlong to study, work, act, achieve. Learn to give up everything unnecessary and be sure, be sure to evaluate your every day. Only you can help yourself learn to do everything you need to do. We are simply showing one of the paths, and it’s up to you to decide whether to follow it or not.

Finally, watch this interesting and very easy video about increasing personal productivity.

We also recommend reading:

Storytelling
How to take control of your time: a selection of useful materials
How to plan a year?
Time management for those who don't have time
Simple time management techniques
The best blog content in 2021: time management and productivity
Time management for younger students
Time management from Google
Holistic time management
Why is time management so important?
Popular and simple time management techniques

Key words:1Time management

How not to make mistakes and why “eat frogs” in the morning

Start the day with the most unpleasant or difficult task or action. For example, calling a client you don’t want to call. It's difficult and scary. But start the day with this call.

Effect of frogs:

When you start the day with such an action, your self-esteem rises sharply. You did something scary - you gained courage. Accordingly, you already do all other things with self-confidence. This will have a positive impact on your next one even if you don’t do half the rest of the things written down in your diary.

Self-esteem will not drop if you have completed the most difficult task of the day.

Learning to work in the conditions that you have here and now

A person can adapt to any circumstances and get used to anything. The main thing is to adequately assess the current situation and think about how you can work under its conditions. After all, you can get used to even constant noise. Or choose to work at a time when the children are guaranteed to sleep during a quiet hour.

For example, if you are the mother of a six-month-old baby and work remotely, place the child next to you. While he is busy looking at the surrounding space and crawling, devote time to work, while not forgetting to maintain visual contact with the baby.

8 more life hacks on how to manage everything during the day (video)

If you approach planning competently and without fanaticism, you can manage to do a lot. And first of all, this concerns the most important and time-consuming matters. However, even in the heaviest of schedules, it is necessary to find time for rest and relaxation. Even if it won’t be as long as you would like.

What life hacks do you use to keep up with everything? If you share your secrets in the comments below the article, I will be very grateful to you for it. Share the post with your friends on social networks if you liked it. See you again on the blog, my dears!

At the end of the day we dedicate time to ourselves

After a busy day, it's important to take time to take care of yourself. To do this, there should be assistants next to you, to whom you could delegate some of the household chores.

Yes, yes, you don’t need to take it all on yourself! You are not a horse, but a Woman who needs self-care like air, otherwise you will quickly burn out. Therefore, learn to delegate some tasks to your household.

At this time, do what brings you pleasure. Taking a fragrant bath, listening to relaxing music, a cup of tea with goodies, reading a book and much more.