How To Improve Your Productivity

How To Improve Your Productivity

The number one excuse I hear from clients who want to make a change in their life is, “I don’t have time!” Many of my clients want to embrace change but struggle when attempting to maximise their time and still achieve their goals. Good time management and discipline are two key elements of making your dream come true. This blog will help you understand how you can find time even with a busy schedule. After all, most of the world’s most successful people are extremely busy people.

Do a time audit

Take time to reflect on how you spent your time at the end of the day. Draw a list of chunks of half hours, write down a list eg 7.00 – 7.30 woke up, showered, had breakfast, got dressed. Try and be precise. You will realise that sometimes in the day you might want to break down times even further even into 5-minute blocks. After you have done this for a few days, you will start to see a pattern of where you often make poor choices of the use of your time.

Where are your time “black holes?”

When you complete a few days of tracking, you’ll be able to identify the places where you can choose to make your time more productive. Notice if there is a pattern where you tend to lose time. Challenge yourself to adapt to another pattern over time, as it is great to be flexible and will help you reach your daily goals faster and easier.

Do you find yourself ‘blanking out’ watching endless shows to unwind after the day? Maybe ask yourself, “Do I really have to binge-watch the latest show?” Maybe one episode a week instead of wasting a whole afternoon or evening. A great question to ask yourself is, “Will watching this show act sucking my time and my dreams away?” If the answer is yes, then you can make the conscious choice to fill that time slot with something productive. Maybe, going for a walk to clear your head from the day will improve your health and you can also combine some self-care at the same time.

Make a plan, not an excuse

Remember, if you want to make a worthwhile change for the better, you will have to make sacrifices for now, in order to attain your goals. While dreaming and focusing on your goals is great, without a change in behaviour, this can’t happen. Do not allow yourself to get stuck in patterns of behaviour that do not help you work towards lasting change.

If you have decided, for example, that you want to work on moving into a different career that you are passionate about, you may decide to create time for yourself to research what training you may need. Or if you need to fine-tune your career planning, then you may want to use the time that you usually just zone out, to schedule a time with a career coach.

If you have decided that your new career requires a higher level of personal fitness, then you will want to use the time to come up with an exercise plan. You will be amazed at the energy you will have from making a change. For some reason, working towards your goals will give you more energy rather than drain you.

You are probably accustomed to feeling ‘drained’ when you think about your ‘job’, but you will be excited for the changes that are happening as you shift into goal busting mode and you will look forward to each new stage.

Time management and self-care

Now that you have sorted out your time black holes, and created a plan to work on your personal development goals, it is important to not burn yourself out with the desire to change. If you miss a time at the gym, or sleep through your alarm every once-in-a-while, it is important to be kind to yourself. Even though you are removing black holes do not forget the relationships with people who nurture your soul. Touching base with good friends or family is important for your mental well being. You are a person, not a robot and it’s ok to have a social life. It is about achieving balance.And it’s necessary.

Evaluate your plans and keep your dream in sight

Now that you have created time to nurture your dream, you and your coach can fine tune and assess how you are tracking to get to your goal. As your journey evolves, it is important that you continue to monitor whether you are and measure it against your plans. If you have set deadlines along the way and you have not reached them, time to check in with a coach who can help you get back on track.

Remember: keep time bandits away by being vigilant. Just like you would for credit card spending on silly things. If you see a black hole, replace it with something that will benefit your future, not steal from it.

You got this!