Holidays are ending and you probably had dinner beside your loved ones, gave gifts to your friends and enjoyed one of the most significant moments of the year. Taking a break and enjoying life is what you deserve, but being honest we are eager to kick off this year.
Prepare yourself for a year of success, applying for a new job, or developing new skills for a promotion. Maybe within your goals for next year you have already decided to learn a new language or start your university life.
It doesn’t matter what you are trying to do, there is something that you are always going to need, and that is productivity.
If your plan for this year is to keep working on your goals, let me tell you that managing this skill can be your key to success.
Productivity is how much work is accomplished in a particular work environment, over a particular period of time, to improve productivity you need to accomplish more in less time.
Being productive can help you set better goals, be more effective, increase focus and boost motivation, to get more and better work done in less time. That’s why a productive person can accomplish bigger and better results.
But, how can you be a productive person by 2024? Let me explain it to you, I’ll give you 5 tips to become a more productive person by the end of this new year.
Identify your personal work habits
Every person has their own habits, and it’s important to identify them in order to be more productive.
You can start asking yourself where you feel more comfortable working, at what hour you feel more energized and efficient, whether you prefer remote or in-office work, which is your favorite task, etc.
After answering these questions, you will be able to understand which are your peaks of energy throughout the day, where you feel more productive, and which are the tasks that you need to prioritize, for you to know how to deal with your day without surprises or delays. This way you are going to be closer to being more productive this year.
Plan your day with the time boxing technique
You already answered your own questions and now you know how long it takes to accomplish a specific task, that’s why I recommend to you this time management technique that is going to help you to organize and manage your time in a way that your most important tasks come first.
Now, how do you use time boxing in your day? Not a big deal, you just need to open your calendar and enter a block of time that you consider that you are going to spend doing a specific task, you can add as many blocks as you want.
The main reason of time boxing is setting a goal for a task within a certain period of time. Instead of working on the task until it’s done, you are going to decide how much time you’ll spend on your task and when it’s over, you are going to start the following task.
Time boxing is going to help you avoid late delivery, low quality on your final results, and over-doing a task, that is not the main goal.
Set small goals for your projects
Sometimes when you try to start a project you can feel overwhelmed, the reasons can be many but most of the time you feel lost and don’t know where to start.
Asking yourself the task that you need to execute to achieve your project can help you to develop it easily. You just need to divide your tasks into small goals that you want to achieve, this will help you to track your progress, and understand what your next step is going to be.
Setting small goals will help you to estimate how long it will take to accomplish your tasks. This way that project that seems huge probably will be easier to execute.
Focus on one goal at a time and stop multitasking
These days there are too many ways of distracting yourself from the main goal, but when we are talking about work you really need to focus on one goal at a time. But, keep calm, because by this moment you probably set your calendar with the time boxing technique.
We were talking about this before, but it’s important to understand that time boxing is going to help you to keep your mind focused on the task that you need to accomplish, and at the same time is going to prevent yourself from multitasking.
Multitasking is one of those ideas that can sound awesome the first time you hear of it, but nothing further from reality. Multitasking makes you less productive.
Being constantly switching from one to another task, reduces your productivity, because you don’t reach your maximum state of concentration developing the task that needs to be done.
Getting distracted from other tasks that pop up on your day can hold up the achievements that you were waiting to accomplish.
That’s why I recommend you just focus on one thing at a time, and then continue with your following tasks, this way you are going to feel less fuzzy, and more productive throughout the day.
Give yourself a break
Developing a project can be time consuming, but don’t forget you are still on christmas, and by this time it’s fine to recap what you have done, which tasks have you completed to understand where you are.
Christmas is the moment for taking a break and being thankful for all the achievements that you have completed this year, give your best smile to whom have been by your side throughout this year, share your best hugs and gift to your loved ones, and enjoy that you are doing your best, for being who you want to be in the future.
Don’t forget that you are building your way to success, and being productive can help you to reach your goals, keep working and have a happy new year!
