The Ultimate Guide To Boost Productivity in 2022
How often do you feel that you are not able to get things done? Imagine waking up early in the morning, working out, getting a healthy breakfast and starting your work. But just then, you realise, it’s already evening and you were not able to get the things done that you had planned to do.
Well, effective personal productivity may not always be easy. It’s also common to feel overwhelmed when you have a lot on your task list for the day. Given the new ritual of working from home, managing personal and professional life can cause you to feel exhausted and unable to do tasks properly.
So what can help you achieve the productivity level that you wish to accomplish this year? In this guide, we help you find all that you were looking for amping up your productivity and tick off everything on your to-do list.
Table of Contents
🚀 What is productivity?
There have been various schools of thought about what is the meaning of productivity. For some, it only means getting things done. But for us, it’s more than that. Productivity levels differ for each individual and how one accomplishes a certain task.
For instance, doing quality work but being unable to produce a good volume of work may not seem productive to some. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a group of individuals who lay more emphasis on the quantity of work rather than quality.
Then what exactly is productivity?
While there are no standard units to measure or define productivity, it can be said that the output you are able to generate over a particular input is productivity. Well, that may sound more like terms from an economics textbook. That’s why we are here to make things simpler.
For instance, think of a situation where you are single-handedly managing the social media page of a brand. It’s Monday morning and you need to make the content calendar for the next few months, design social media posts and write copies for the next ten uploads.
Oh, and not to forget about publishing at least ten Instagram stories throughout the day.
But you need to get all these tasks done alone. So at what level of output would you consider yourself to have a productive day?
As we mentioned, there’s no defined measure of productivity. That said, if you are able to manage to complete all these tasks on your own, on time, then you can consider yourself to have a productive day.
But, you also need to take into consideration the quality of the work – which is equally important to generate good leads and traffic to the Instagram page of the brand.
This was just another example of what productivity may mean to a social media manager. Productivity, however, is very unique and it depends on what you believe can be evaluated as productive or otherwise.
📊 What is personal productivity?
As professionals, students or anyone living in 2022, it’s no secret that all of us are constantly evaluating our achievements. In doing so, we may miss out on an important factor – what is it that we are looking to achieve in terms of productivity.
But first, let deep dive and understand what is personal productivity.
Personal productivity can be said to be the amount of work you are able to complete that helps you achieve your goals seamlessly. It’s worth noting that these goals may be both short and long term goals.
For example, you may aim to get into the habit of journaling for the whole year. But your long term goal could be to invest in real estate. For the first goal, all you need to do is take some time out every day to journal – preferably at the beginning or end of the day.
For the long term goal, you will need to strategise on how you wish to achieve that goal. Would you take up short courses on investments? Would you sign up for a weekly newsletter to understand what is real estate investment?
Personal productivity may seem difficult in the beginning. But it’s no rocket science. All you need to do is know what you are aiming for — plan, strategise, find a solution to achieve that goal and finally make gradual progress.
👩💻 What is the importance of personal productivity?
Many consider the ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time as productivity. However, the truth about productivity is that we need to make sense of the work we do. That means every work you seek to complete should be meaningful to you.
Let's begin by understanding the fundamentals of productivity.
One of the main reasons for failing to be productive is the presence of too many things around us. It’s not surprising that once you open the browser, you may like beginning your day by reading a news blog. Now the blog has several links to others blogs. You end up clicking this and of course, reading them. Now you have already consumed ten to fifteen minutes into reading them.
The story doesn’t end there. Whilst working, you may come across something that you may not know about. You go to YouTube to understand that. Again, you come across recommendations and that leads to you watching another video.
Not to forget the incessant Zoom meetings that you need to attend in the middle of this all.
A series of videos later, you realise it’s time for lunch.
That’s when you start realising the importance of personal productivity. Of course, productivity is personal, yet there are techniques that are widely known that help boost productivity. While we will shed the spotlight on that later, first we will understand the importance of personal productivity.
🔍 Finding clarity
Personal productivity helps you understand not just what productivity is but also find clarity in the work you do. By improving personal productivity, you will be able to understand what works for you and what does not. Clarity is terms of the choices you make, the steps you take to make life simpler, the work you do and the lifestyle you have chosen for yourself.
⏰ Better time management
This cannot be emphasised enough. With personal productivity, you are able to manage your life better – making it easier for you to effectively utilise time. Be it waking up early to complete your tasks for the day or getting ample time to sleep, you will end up finding more time for yourself and even spending quality time with your dear ones.
📝 Quality work starts immediately
Hands up if the lack of productivity in your life is making it difficult for you to produce quality work!
If you are a working professional with a family to take care of, you are probably bombarded with thousands of things to take care of. Finding yourself in the midst of a hurricane in such a situation is understandable.
With better personal productivity, you are able to balance your work and life. Quality work is not just limited to work for your employer or your business – it also denotes the work you do at home. Improving your personal productivity can help you be a better caregiver, cook as well as take care of yourself.
At a time when everyone’s competing with each other, it’s important to take a step back and reflect upon the fact that the work you do for a living is not just who you are. You are more than your profession. You are an individual with limitless possibilities and with the right personal productivity, you can take your work – be it at work or home or anywhere else in the world to the next best level possible.
🥰 Feeling content
How you manage your time is a big indicator of the type of work you do. When you are focusing on personal productivity, you will be able to produce better work as stated above. This will, in turn, help you feel more content about what you do and achieve.
With the right strategy to boost personal productivity, you will be able to amplify the satisfaction that you feel after completing a task. And while it’s normal to feel uncertain if your work hit a particular benchmark, you will be able to get close to meeting the expectations of the stakeholders.
It’s obvious that feeling personal productivity is essential to making the most out of your time and potential. So the next time you want to make sure you are doing all you want to, make it a point to boost your personal productivity. That will help you enhance other aspects of your life as well.
🗓 How to create a productivity planner
You may have come across thousands of articles and videos – or even podcasts telling you to adapt a to-do list. While such a list may help you accomplish some of your tasks, it’s worth asking yourself — does a to-do list really help you get things done, or is it the anxiousness of getting things done.
If it’s the latter, then you are with us on this. Why?
Because while a to-do list can to some extent help you, what you need is a plan to get these things done.
To help you do this here’s a strategy to help you get to create your own productivity planner.
💡 Take a notebook and write down all the things you wish to get done for the day.
💡 Now number each of these tasks in order of their priority.
💡 Use a marker to point out the most important tasks for the day as that will help you sort out what needs to be done NOW!
💡 Now schedule the time you want to dedicate to each task. For example,
8 am to 9 am: Read a book
9 am to 10:30 am: Write a thesis
10:30 am to 10:50 am: Take a coffee break
It’s important to keep slots for breaks in between your tasks so that you can avoid burnout.
To summarise
Productivity depends on various factors. While this blog aims to help you get started on leading a productive life, we recommend that you read more on how you can boost productivity here.
So are you ready to make 2022 the most productive year?
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