20+ Tips to Improve Your Productivity

Are you productive enough? Actually, is productivity worth to be increased by product managers?

At the beginning of the year, the author of Inc.com in his article defined and shared 27 productivity tips to begin this year.

Let’s remind them all:

• Increase your energy. To help you get your energy levels up, take a moment every morning to write down your purposes, or the why behind your current pursuit.
• Work with your calendar.
• Create a mini-crisis. Some people thrive under pressure, allowing them to accomplish more than they originally thought possible in the time frame. You can recreate that sensation by blocking out less time than you actually think you need.
• Switch off smartphone notifications.
• Schedule emails. Don’t let email take over your day. Instead, schedule time at the beginning and at the end of the day specifically for email.
• Put time-suck websites in time out.
• Avoid lyrics. Choose either instrumentals for ambiance or white noise to block out sound instead.
• Must-do is the first.
• Take on two-minute tasks second. To pare things down, after handling your must-dos, head straight to your quick tasks.
• Group like tasks together. When your brain is already engaging in a particular way, use it to your benefit by focusing on similar activities in rapid succession.
• Cut meeting times by 25%. You’ll still tackle the important topics but be less likely to have unnecessary discussions.
• Consider Stand Up meetings. This keeps people from settling in and encourages them to get to the point and move on with their day.
• Perfect is the enemy of the good. Perfection can ultimately be the enemy, and is often an illusion, especially if you keep pushing to improve something that is already good. Move on to other tasks and accept that good can be good enough for success.
• Know when to delegate and outsource.
• Don’t neglect professional development. Professional development helps you acquire new skills and perspectives, letting you be more effective.
• Automate. There are many options for automating processes, such as emails and proposal or quote delivery.
• Unsubscribe and unfollow. This is about social networks and emails. This will clean up your inbox and feed, letting you find helpful information quickly.
• Check in with yourself. At least once a week, check in with yourself by assessing how you’re feeling, and then make plans to remedy any negative emotions that may be lingering.
• Use “no” strategy. Saying yes to every task leaves you overwhelmed, but saying no can be its own source of stress.
• Invest in dual screens. Having two full-size computer screens can be incredibly beneficial.
• Don’t fixate on where you start.
• Use templates.
• Save permanently. If you’re working on a long document or report, hit the Save button as often as possible. Make a habit of saving after every key point.
• Learn the keyboard shortcuts.
• Ignore the news. Trying to keep up with the news is essentially impossible, allowing it to generally function as a time sink.
• Stop multitasking.
• Get everything you can out of Excel. In as little as an hour, you can learn to use advanced features such as pivot tables, graphing, vlookups, and so on.

Following these tips, you will increase your productivity for sure!