Personal Development | Productivity | Life Hacks

5 Productivity Hacks I Can’t Give Up

Overcoming procrastination through productivity hacks

I have always struggled with productivity and procrastination. I read a lot of books on the subject and tested a lot of hacks, tools, ways of organizing time, and my work.

Here are the 5 ways that stuck with me and with which I became more productive.

1. Use Excel

Excel is the best tool ever.

Everything I learned in it was self-taught. I never took any courses or training and I only saw some tutorials on the Internet.

But with the little that I know how to do, Excel helped me a lot to be a more organized person.

It is in Excel that I structure my writing schedule since I write two articles a day, and I am working on my second novel.

I also manage my personal finances in Excel with a simple table. I have my earnings, and my expenses, all divided by categories.

I know that nowadays there are apps for all this. But Excel allows me to keep all the data in one place. And, through Google Drive, I have access to it whenever and wherever I want.

2. Cold Turkey Writer

A tool I’ve discovered in a nice article from Neeramitra Reedy.

Cold Turkey Writer is a program that turns your computer into a typewriter. It blocks everything else.

You have no choice but to write the words you define at the beginning of each session. (There’s also a time option)

Me being a relentless procrastinator, it has helped me to be very productive with my writing. I can now focus without constantly leaving the document to check this or that.

The trick is to put the cell phone away too!

3. Divide and conquer

I’m the kind of person who wants to do everything at once. If one article on Medium got me $1, I want to write a thousand articles!

If doing 10 push-ups made me lose 100 grams, I want to do 1000 push-ups!

This kind of attitude always leads, in my experience, to burnout.

It was only when I started to divide my work by days of the week or even month, that I started to be more productive. Because productivity is not about quantity, but about the value of the work, as Pedro Gomes says.

So, dividing my work added value to it.

I even ended up producing more. Why? Because burnout often led me to long periods without producing anything.

As José Saramago once said:

Let’s not rush — but let’s not waste time.

4. Learn to rest

When we have a “normal” job, from 9 to 5, we are “obliged” to rest from that work, on our days off.

Yet, when we decide to dedicate our lives to being a creator we stop resting.

We have the idea that we have to be producing and working all the time. Because if we don’t, we are going to be overtaken by other people who are not stopping to rest.

Not taking time off to rest, date, and live, is another big stride towards burnout.

We need time off. We need to sleep enough hours and have moments to ourselves. It’s essential because it allows the work we perform and create to have more quality and more value.

5. Rules, rules, rules!

I have always been averse to rules. I always had problems with authority, and if someone forced me to do something, I wouldn’t do it.

This insolence ended up being one of the reasons I’ve become obsessed with a life based on thought.

But as time went on I realized the importance of rules. In a balanced way, I ended up defining some rules that allowed me to be more productive in my work.

Instead of forcing myself to write for 4 hours, I define that I have to write two articles in the period I am writing. I can take longer than that four hours that I set, or I can take less. And, if it takes less, that’s the time I save to do other things.

I also set that I have to read 100 pages a day. Most days I manage. Indeed, I read fast, but for an avid reader, 100 pages are not much.

To include these rules in my routine and stick to them gives me a sense of control.

And being in control is very important when you’re your own boss.

In conclusion

And these were the 5 tools or ways that I have included in my routine.

Excel has been in on it for many years, Cold Turkey is a week old. I added it because it had immediate effects on my productivity and is something to stay.

Learning to rest, divide our work, or set some ground rules comes with time and experience. But has a brutal effect on our productivity. It allows us to create more value.

· What about you, what productivity hacks do you have?

· How do you keep up with everything you have to do?

· Have any of these ideas been helpful to you?

· Share them with me in the comments!

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