5 Powerful Daily Routines That Will Boost Your Productivity in Under 10 Minutes

Do the 20% of things that drive 80% of your results.

I’m inherently lazy. Not the lay on the couch all day long lazy, but the isn’t there an easier way to do this lazy. I want to save myself tons of unnecessary work — just like you.

Naturally, I’m a big fan of the Pareto Principle, which states that about 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions.

While you will get nothing for free and everything takes at least some work, there are always things that are worth your time more than others. They produce incredibly large results in comparison to the effort you have to put in. Productivity is no exception.

Do you want to become more productive? Would you like to get the important stuff done faster so you’ve got more free time to enjoy?

Are you tired of trying out fancy methods, complicated tools, and misleading advice for marginal results?

Do you want to do the 20% of things that really boost your productivity instead?

Then this one is for you. I’ve put together five powerful daily routines that will take you less than ten minutes each, but without them, your productivity and performance will fall very short of what they could be.

One last thing before we start — it’s not called a routine for nothing. You need to build a habit and be consistent. To see exceptional results, you have to apply these daily. But if you don’t have ten minutes a day to spare and save you many hours in the long run, I don’t know what to tell you.

Prioritized To-Do Lists

“Checking items off a to-do list doesn’t determine progress; focusing on your priorities is what counts.”

— Frank Sonnenberg

There is this common misconception that keeping a to-do list and checking off items will make you more productive. Do you really think ticking off things such as laundry, watering the plants, and making food will move the needle?

No. That’s a game of checking off that gives you a sense of progress and allows you to evade the important, yet difficult stuff in favor of feeling good and deluding yourself.

What you need instead is a way to prioritize your tasks and work on the things that propel you forward, without getting lost in the myriad of small distractions that come up every day.

That is why you have to prioritize the items on your to-do list. Write down your Most Important Tasks (MITs) every day. Work on them as soon as you can and put everything else on the backburner. Even if your day becomes a shitshow of distractions and unforeseen events afterward, you still got done what’s most important.

Not only that, but plowing through your biggest and most important tasks right in the beginning gives you a feeling of accomplishment and gets rid of the nagging thoughts in the back of your head.

I take five minutes every evening to write down my MITs so that in the morning, all I have to do is get up and work on what matters.

Set Up Your Environment for Focus and Productivity

The more focused you are, the more productive you can be. That’s a no-brainer. But did you know that the biggest factor that makes or breaks your focus is your environment?

A clean desk, organized stacks of documents, and an easy to navigate folder structure and file names on your computer make the difference between razor-sharp focus and losing yourself in chaos.

Your environment is a prime example of small input — tremendous output. If you do it on a daily basis, it won’t take you more than ten minutes to get your surroundings in order, but the effect will be huge.

Think about it — every time you give in to even the tiniest distraction or lose your momentum because you have to look for a file, it breaks your train of thought. It pulls you out of the zone and kills your productivity.

In the morning, before I start my actual work, I take ten minutes to get everything in order. Clean up coffee cups, make my bed, put old documents away, and wipe down my desk. This doesn’t only give me a clean work environment, it also helps your brain to focus on structure, work, and productivity.

Have your environment work for you instead of against you.

Intermittent Exercise

When you sit down for too long or don’t give your brain some time to rest in between tasks, your mind goes foggy and your focus deteriorates. Exercise is a great way to prevent this.

The problem is that not all of us have the energy, time, or discipline to roll out of bed at 5 am to hit the gym half an hour later and be energized throughout the day. If you do, congrats. Keep doing what you’re doing.

But even if you’re the sporty type and break a sweat every morning, you’ll still be sitting in front of your computer or in meetings for the majority of the day.

You need to break up all the heavy mental work with a bit of physical exercise to increase blood flow to the brain and boost your energy levels. This will also alleviate the back problems a lot of knowledge workers struggle with.

To do that, I always have two things in reach of my desk — juggling balls and a yoga mat.

Juggling is great to get your brain off the things it has been grinding on for the past few hours — don’t worry, you’ll be able to pick it up quickly with the help of a YouTube video or two. The yoga mat is perfect for stretching out after I’ve been sitting for too long.

Keep these things handy and set yourself a timer to get moving every two hours or so — even if it’s just for five minutes, you will feel refreshed and be more productive afterward.

Reflection, Journaling, and Learning from Your Mistakes

Maxwell Maltz, author of bestseller and personal development classic Psycho-Cybernetics, argues that we have a subconscious mechanism in our brain. It does a lot of thinking, learning, and general legwork in the background.

Whether you believe in this idea or not, you’re all familiar with the following situation: You take a shower or sit on the couch, minding your own business and unwinding, and all of a sudden you come up with the perfect response to an argument you had earlier during the day.

That’s because your brain has had time to process everything that has happened and come up with new insights, smart thoughts, and solutions to your problems by itself.

The issue is that if you’re too busy, you don’t take the time to listen to it. You’re always occupied with the next thing to work on, the next show to watch, the next decision you have to make.

Most of our learnings and insights come to us when we take a step back and slow down, allowing our brain to put together and reflect on all the experiences we have taken in during the day.

That’s why regular journaling and reflection are so powerful. Because they allow you to take a second look at what happened during the day — what went right and what went wrong. On top of that, it lets you listen to the ideas and solutions your brain has been cooking up in the background.

I can’t even count how many times I have been writing in my journal in the evening when a solution to a problem unfolded itself in front of me or I was flooded with new ideas.

Great questions to start off with are: What made me happy today? What am I grateful for? What did I do wrong and how can I learn from it? What made me laugh? What did I learn? Answer these on a daily basis and you’re guaranteed to see some progress.

Journaling and reflecting your days makes you more productive because you can assess how your day went and how you can improve. Even more important, it gives you some time to listen to what your brain has been cooking up in the background.

Master the Skill of Sleeping and Regeneration

The best is left until last. Proper sleep is key. I have neglected it for years. I hated sleeping — until I uncovered its true nature. It isn’t a waste of time, a simple necessity or even a nuisance. Sleep is a skill.

Look, regeneration is essential. World-famous athletes such as LeBron James reportedly sleep up to 12 hours per day. Why? Because they have understood that to perform well and be super-productive, you have to be super-well-rested.

You can’t keep your focus and get tons of work done if your brain is foggy and you spend half your time yawning and the other half running to the coffee machine and back.

I have only started to get my sleep schedule and hygiene in order a few months ago — but I can already say that I never want to go back.

How do you put this into practice? Apart from the usual tips such as a cool and quiet environment and no phone or TV an hour before bed, there is another thing you can do to ensure you get enough sleep.

Think about how much sleep you need, add an hour to that, and calculate at what time you’d have to go to bed. Then, set an alarm for an hour prior to that — this gives you ample time to finish whatever you’re doing in the evening, turn off electronics, brush your teeth, and move into bed.

Allow yourself to get ample rest for two to three weeks, see what you feel like and what it does to your productivity. You’ll never go back.

One Step at a Time

Do you know what the number one problem is that causes most of the advice you read to fall flat?

You don’t act upon it.

You read tons of things, watch a lot of videos and obtain a truckload of useful and valuable information. But you only act upon a small percentage of it, if even.

Why? Because acting on something is a lot harder than reading about it.

I don’t blame you. I struggle with it, just as you do.

That’s why I want to make it easier for you to act on the things you read. That’s why I have picked routines that don’t take more than ten minutes per day. And to make it even more convenient for you: Pick only the one or two routines that you think you’d benefit most from — and commit to consistently follow through.

That adds up to ten to twenty minutes per day in exchange for a big productivity boost and hours saved in the long run.

You’ve really got no excuse left. Act upon it.

There is one thing that kills your productivity like nothing else: Procrastination and kicking things down the road. Here is how to beat it.

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