2X productivity: Three simple steps

Focus on being productive instead of being busy. Do you make a to-do list every day and barely check things off your list while going to bed at night? That doesn’t mean that you didn’t have enough time, it just means that you haven’t worked on your productivity yet. Through these three simple actions, you will not only be able to finish your tasks quickly but will also be able to execute each task efficiently. Before we move on to how we can double our productivity, let’s understand what productivity is.

What is productivity?

When a person is productive, he/she does quality work, goes to his/her optimum potential and is strict with time. Being productive is carrying out every single task in an efficient manner in a set time frame. Thus, a productive person would avoid multi-tasking because when one multi-tasks, he/she does not go up to his/her optimum potential to get the best output of the individual tasks and the efficiency reduces thus decreasing the productivity. Now let’s look at a three-step process which can help save time and increase productivity.

Planning goals the SMART way

Goals that you want to achieve should be SMART.

S- Specific

M- Measurable

A- Attainable

R- Realistic

T- Time-bound

For example, consider this: I want to score a 90 out of 100 in my maths test which is to take place next Monday, one week from now.

Now in the above example, we can see that this goal fulfils all the five criteria for it to be a SMART goal. This brings clarity to your goals and helps you plan better. Now if I would simply write my goal as I want to score well in my upcoming math exam, it would not create as much enthusiasm as the previous one as it lacks specifics.

Now once you are ready with your SMART goals, move on to the next step.

Prepare your personal kanban

Once you are done preparing your goals, list down all the tasks that you need to do in order to achieve that goal, the tasks that you are doing right now to achieve it and the tasks that you have done until now. For the above example mentioned, your to-do can include: Solve 50 questions each from the topics, write a mock test, revise formulae; your doing can include: Make notes and list down formulae for each topic; and done can include: Buy textbook and get resources.

Now after preparing your personal kanban, arrange all the tasks in each column from hardest to easiest. This way, you will be able to sort out your important tasks in a systematic manner. Once done with this, move on to the final step: time-boxing.

Timeboxing: Split your tasks into blocks of time

When you timebox your tasks that you are doing and are yet to do, you focus on the time as well as the task instead of just focusing on the task. This ensures that you don’t waste time on any particular task and finish all individual tasks within the time frame that is available to you. It is a simple and effective way to manage your daily workload and thus helps you achieve your goal within the deadline set by you. This way you can readily double your productivity and also ignore distractions as the time-bound tasks will improve your focus on individual tasks. This will also help you avoid procrastination.

Go ahead and try these three steps today: Set your SMART goals, prepare your personal kanban and assemble your time-boxes. But remember to do everything with a smile on your face because happiness inspires productivity.