7 Productivity Hacks That Made My Life Easier
And can help you too
Time is a very volatile thing. If used wisely, it can help you build a whole new world for yourself, and if wasted, it can destroy the one you got for free.
Time is a limited asset, and no one has more time than you do. It’s not about how much time you have, it’s about how you utilize the remaining time.
From the above, we can easily conclude that in the end, your productivity matters above all. If you can organize and lead process-driven work, you can help yourself get more in a limited time.
Following are 7 productivity hacks that I know and use that can help you extract more out of your life.
I don’t try to memorize anything
I have noticed that my brain needs a lot of energy and time to memorize something. And hence I try to minimize the things I need to memorize as much as possible.
If it’s important, write it down. If it’s really important, you’re going to remember it, anyway.
Whenever I think I need to remember something, I write it down in my notes app or a notebook. Many times, I don’t know if it happens with others as well, I have noticed that I tend to remember most of what I write in my notes and don’t need to sit and recall what happened there when I wrote that point.
Put everything on your calendar
Following the above point, to not remember my important events and bill payment dates, I put them on my calendar.
One catch with this hack
Many events need their preparation started well before the actual date or time. In those cases, make sure you set an alarm well before the event time. One more thing that you can do is that you can send an e-mail to yourself a few days before the event date so that you can prepare well before the event.
Time blocking
Just like distributing the months into different events, we can distribute the day into several tasks. It might be hourly, quarterly, or as you wish you want, depending on the tasks at hand.
Following is a part of the time blocking routine I used during my JEE preparation (on holidays):
5 AM-6 AM — Morning routine 6 AM-8 AM — Physics revision 8 AM-10 AM — Chemistry revision 10 AM-12 noon — Mathematics revision
It was based on that I loved Physics and Chemistry was very boring to me, so I used to start my day with Physics, follow Chemistry with the momentum, and when the motivation dips, get on to Mathematics.
After that, I used to have my lunch, then follow the same routine where revision is replaced with practice.
Similarly, you can also assign yourself different tasks at different times of the day.
Schedule self e-mails for future
You can schedule an e-mail to be sent to you in the future, giving you the context, the reason, and everything you need to know so that you can start working on that idea instantly.
Maybe while working on a project you get across a new, intriguing idea, and you know you can’t pick it up right now. You can e-mail yourself with all the details about that idea, the context, the reason, everything.
And if you can’t act upon it that day, you can always reschedule it for the future.
WhatsApp self group
Yes, a WhatsApp group where only you are present. I created one group with some of my friends, then kicked them out, and I got a WA group in which only I am present.
I can send anything to this group. Any picture, video, message, suggestion, anything that I think is important and can help me in the future, I send it in there.
Afternoon Nap
Many of us may not have the privilege to take an afternoon nap, but if you have, even for a few minutes like 10–15 minutes it can charge you up for the rest of the day, possibly night as well. At least in my case, it works. Try to keep the naps small and nap in a quiet, little dark place.
Set up your environment
Your environment matters. You may try it for yourself. Work as if you are in an office or university and work on your bed, you’ll instantly realize the difference. If possible, have a designated room in your house where you do all such tasks.
Respect your work, give the attention that they require and they will give you the result you want.
So those were the 7 hacks that I use to make myself more productive and let others perceive that I’ve got a lot of time, haha.
I hope you found it useful. Thanks for reading!!
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