How To Be More Productive And Make Time For Everything With Minimal Stress – 15 Tricks That Will Blow Your Mind!
Do you often feel like you don’t have enough time for all the daily goals that you plan for? No matter what you try nothing seems to break that continuous circle of procrastination or poor time management.
We all have heard this age-old question “How can I get more things done easier, faster, and without much stress?” Seems like you’ve tried everything, but still, you get off the track, get lost in the time and even the most important tasks get lost in the shuffle because you just don’t know what to focus on primarily.
I was there. I was in your place, and I remember it all too well! Actually, I don’t want to remember it, ’cause I always feel penitent about all the precious time I lost not having a slight idea about the methods that I’m about to show you.
Like… Girl, how didn’t you find out about it earlier? None of it happened until I sat down one evening and did a deeper research, and finally, every piece of the puzzle fell into its place. I’m about to show you the exact tips I still use every day to have the most productive day without feeling all tensed, stressed, and overwhelmed that I can’t wait to wrap it all up.
1. Plan your day the evening before
Imagine waking up in the morning already overslept, and suddenly anxiety strikes you because you don’t know what you need to do, what to do first, what your priorities are, and what to leave for later.
Making plans for the day might take up to two hours when done in this manner. Don’t squander your time; there’s a lot you can do in those two hours!
In order to experience more flow and anxiety-relieving morning, you need to plan and schedule the priorities and all the tasks the day before.
Just continue reading, and we’ll get to it…
2. What do you mean by „everything“? Write a priority list
You probably have a lot of tasks on your mind, some highly important and urgent, and some negligible. The truth is, we only have 24 hours in a day, and can’t expect ourselves to go all swiftly and ebulliently throughout the day and do it all.
There will always pop up some unexpected things you didn’t plan for, that can take you off the scheduled track, and it’s therefore pretty easy to lose your mind with the whole schedule.
Section all your tasks for the day into parts from „Priorities“ to „Not urgent“, and give a mark to each section with different colors. Organize them in this order:
- RED – urgent, the priority
- YELLOW – not as urgent, comes right below the red priority
- BLUE – the 3. priorities (easy tasks)
- GREEN – the least important, „If I have free time left“ tasks
In this way, you’ll have a clear route and understanding of where to focus your attention primarily and won’t waste time running around getting just „anything“ done.
3. Don’t limit yourself to the strict time frame for each task
I always prefer not to be too strict with my time frame, since that enthusiasm wanes out easily and I continuously find myself getting past my time schedule. By this, I mean don’t limit yourself to a specific time interval to get a task done.
As I said, it’s always possible that unanticipated events can arise that will cause you to deviate from your plans. As a result, it’s simple to become overwhelmed with your entire calendar.
And, at least for me, when I limit myself to a certain time interval it creates such pressure and expectations. Checking the clock every 10 minutes to see my progress, and calculating if I’ll finish in time… is just too exhausting and stressful. The creativity always seems to be blocked that way.
Have a full scheduled day, but don’t set a time frame in which each task needs to be done. Let the creativity flow naturally, and freely. You’ll be much more relaxed and more likely to finish tasks even faster when you don’t have a time ticking!
4. You can expect your productivity level the second you get into bed – let me show you how
This is probably one of the most common toxic pre-morning habits!
If you go to bed after midnight and expect to be energized, eager, and ready to have the most productive day, I have to break it for you, but you most likely are not.
Due to our internal body clock, also known as the circadian rhythm, the body benefits more from sleep before midnight. Before midnight, every hour of sleep is worth two afterward. That age-old proverb was undoubtedly followed by your ancestors and great-grandparents!
All of us have been there. We genuinely like absorbing hundreds of various pieces of information on social media just before bedtime while pretending that we are resting. We are really exerting ourselves even more, which makes it harder for our bodies to gradually relax and prepare for a restful night’s sleep.
Some studies show that not using your phone at least an hour before going to bed helps with reducing sleep latency, decreasing pre-sleep arousal and sleep delay, increasing sleep duration, and improving working memory.
It’s a harmless, and hardly-breaking habit we all are prone to, but not impossible to overcome!
What You Could Do Instead…
It may be challenging at first, but try. For 2 nights. Put your phone on airplane mode or totally turn it off so that you don’t get tempted to grab it.
There are plenty of things you can do after disconnecting from the enticing world of social media. Have you considered journaling your thoughts in the morning or before bed, turning on the radio instead of Spotify, and glancing at the moon and stars for some time?
Recapitulate the day, and reflect on the things you forgot to be grateful for… you can do all of it, even without starting excessively overthinking, and putting pressure on your mind just before going to bed.
5. An Early morning is your best friend (potentially)
I know, some people no matter what they do, just can’t be highly productive in the early morning and are preferably night owls. But, have you ever wondered how morning people always tend to get way more things done, than those night owls?
When it is dark outside, our bodies are programmed to create the hormone melatonin, which promotes sleep. Our circadian rhythms, or internal clocks, control our body’s sleep-wake cycle by interacting with the light and darkness in our environment.
According to Healthline – getting enough sleep comes with plenty of benefits:
- Improved mood
- Better concentration
- Lower chance of obesity and other chronic diseases
I can’t explain to you how many times I woke up at 4 AM just to experiment with how much I was going to learn (it was not very hard for me since I’m an early bird 😉), and surprisingly, each time I learned in an hour a lecture that would usually take me at least 2 hours!
It may not work for you in that way, since we are all different, but you’ll never know if you don’t try and see how you’re going to react to it.
6. Declutter your space
Emotional clutter can develop in your mind as a result of physical clutter in your living area. That’s definitely something I finally realized after being too lazy to declutter my room and help get my mind in order.
You could feel as though things are spinning out of control when there is clutter all around. Your attention and ability to process information might be severely impacted by having too much clutter around you!
Even just making slight decoration changes or position alternatives boosted my creativity enormously. I don’t know if it’s the common thing, or I just function that way, but unless I clear out my space and make some changes in my room, I won’t be as productive as I potentially can be.
Also, your anxiety level and sleep habits can be impacted by clutter, which can then have an impact on your level of productivity and focus. It may feel liberating and energizing to declutter a bit!
Consider, for instance, switching out the curtains to match the mood, getting a new house plant every month, or putting your memorabilia in a different location. As long as you take action on it, what you do doesn’t really matter.
Minimizing every clutter you may have correlates also to the ones you don’t see visually, but those that wander in your mind. Full email box of unnecessary emails you subscribed to years ago and still get notified, a bunch of irrelevant emails you no longer benefit from – believe it, or not, all of it has a major effect on how you’re going to concentrate!
7. Use the 3-3-3-3 Method
We can all agree here, that we plan enthusiastically all of our yearly goals, set those „New Year resolutions“ and just expect to stick to them firmly throughout the whole year!
Bam, reality slap… it suddenly seems harder than you initially planned. Since that enthusiasm wanes out easily, high goals that you started working on, out of the blue sound and seem too difficult to complete.
When it comes to bigger yearly goals, instead of planning a whole year ahead, a much wiser option would be to break it down to 3-3-3-3. This means segmenting tasks for each of the 3-month frames. I always split my year into four quarters at the beginning of the year and list one to three things I want to concentrate on in each quarter.
- January, February, March
- April, May, June
- July, August, September
- October, November, December
You have the opportunity to adjust your goals when you plan quarterly.
Setting objectives only once a year restricts your ability to adapt to changes that may happen during the year. With a 90-day plan, you may discard the parts of your ideas that don’t work and swap them out with an approach that does.
8. It’s a paradox, but start with the easier tasks first
This is an unpopular way to trick your brain. Stay with me…
If you see a task or action that you know can be completed in two minutes or less, do it immediately.
Simply, seeing ticked-off tasks on your to-do list tricks your brain into thinking you’re actually making massive projects. When you look on your to-do list you just see a bunch of tasks waiting to be completed, not their size. At least not at first glance. Starting means it’s simple to gain momentum, and feeling good about your progress makes it possible.
Oppositely, starting with the most demanding tasks first takes the enthusiasm away quickly, and drains your energy (it takes longer to complete). Similarly, it tricks your mind like you’re not making any progress.
Whenever you peek to see your to-do list progress, and when you don’t see ticked-off tasks, you become more anxious you won’t manage everything on time.
9. If writing down isn’t a good reminder – here are the alternative reminder apps you I swear by!
If noting down your tasks isn’t as motivating and mentally encouraging, why not consider some of the free option apps that will do most of the motivating work for you?
Aesthetically pleasing backgrounds, inspiring quotes, alarm reminders, and neatly segmented, colored „priority“ and „not urgent“ tasks, are just some of the advantages. Here are the best ones to consider…
- Any. do
- Notion
- TickTick
- Todoist
- ClickUp
- Asana
- Trello
10. If you can’t cut this toxic habit, you’ll be forever stuck in the loop of procrastination
- In 15 minutes time, you can read approximately 10 pages
- In 30-minute you can do your whole cardio, exercises for the day
- In an hour you can learn 20 new words and 10 phrases in another language
And, I know what you’re thinking, „It’s just 5 minutes, nothing more!“. Was it ever just 5 minutes, or did it almost always end up with you losing track of time and mindlessly continuing schooling for the whole hour?
There is a temptation to check the new message right away or thoughts are diverted by it when fresh messages keep popping up on the phone while at work.
To maintain a clear concentration on thoughts, it is vital to limit distractions like communication and social networks because shifting attention demands mental effort. The truth is, you’ll forever be caged in this trap, and never get the most out of your potential if you don’t firmly decide to change it.
Be a stronger character. You can do so much better. You’re just one intention away. One decision away.
Unplug. Dedicate some time to yourself. Life is so much more than social media. You’ll be okay if you don’t know every single detail that will make you overthink.
11. App blocker is our best friend!
Believe it or not, you can maintain attention by controlling how much time you spend on applications by using an app blocker!
Additionally, it keeps you from accidentally opening an app (or intentionally), staying, and scrolling for too long, and losing track of time and your productivity. As we already said, A LOT can be done in just „15 minutes of TikTok, that’s nothing“ – read again the previous chapter.
Using these apps has been the game changer, and I’m not exaggerating!
Here is how it can help you (significantly):
- Block a list of websites and/or apps (determined by you)
- Give you the representation of how much time you spend on each app
- Allow you to set a schedule and/or a timer
- Notify you a couple of minutes before you run out of arranged time
- Give you each time a new motivating message/quote
I personally use the StayFree app, and again, I’m not exaggerating, it has changed the game in my productivity! Like, I don’t know what the hell I was doing before?!
There is one thing I have to break for you, even though those apps can help you noticeably, nothing will work unless you do. I mean, you can easily change the time block in the app’s settings the second you run out of time you set for an app. Right?
In the end, it all comes down to how high your determination level is, and how disciplined you are. Be a strong character, because you can!
12. Add plants
Have you ever tried working somewhere with little to no fresh air? It may leave you feeling fatigued, with irritable headaches and exhaustion, as well as concentration problems. Our health and performance suffer when the air we breathe is of lower quality.
Adding a little greenery to your home office pays dividends! In nature, plants act as carbon dioxide and oxygen exchangers! According to an American Society for Horticultural Science research, employees who were among plants at work felt less stressed and were more productive.
Another study from the Journal of Corporate Real Estate found that plants can eliminate VOCs from workspaces. Since “occupants of planted offices feel more comfortable, more productive, healthier, and more creative and feel less pressure than occupants of non-planted offices,” they proved that well-being and productivity go hand in hand.
Also, according to research, when people gazed at the color green for two seconds before undertaking a creative job, their creativity was enhanced.
13. … or if possible, take „A nature pill“
Just imagine… there’s a gentle breeze blowing through your hair, the first sunrays of the day are lying down on your skin… You can hear the birds chirping around… All that while looking at a glorious, light that shines through the white clouds, and caresses your cheeks…
Just a little bit of greenery can significantly increase your focus, mood, and productivity throughout the day thanks to the fresh air that comes from being outside, which can burn the fuel stored in your cells to produce energy.
According to psychology research from the University of Michigan, people’s memory recall and attention span increased by 20% after spending an hour outside and engaging with nature.
There are enormous benefits of working outside, but even if you don’t know all of them, at least go for the feeling. There’s nothing that can compare to waking up with the sunrise on a fresh summer morning, bringing your notebooks and laptop outside, and getting those tasks ticked off the schedule!
14. Close your eyes for 2 minutes
We’ve all been in a situation (perhaps even every day) when we stare at the phone or computer for hours and hours working, losing track of time, causing numbness and tingling that can range from sitting in one position for too long. How much time has passed? Nobody knows!
I noticed I was doing that way too often and firmly decided I needed to do something about it ASAP. Primarily because of my eye health and in order to prevent temporary blurry vision.
One simple hack is simply closing your eyes for a minute or 2. Closing your eyes relaxes your muscles and organs while also calming your thoughts. It is frequently referred to as “quiet wakefulness”. By closing your eyes, you are effectively signaling to your body that it is okay to stop concentrating or thinking.
I know you’ll most often immerse yourself into the thing you’re doing, and totally forget about it, but set an alarm – every 15-20 minutes your phone will notify you (just put the text on the alarm „relax, close your eyes, and breathe calmly“. This is exactly how I do it, and let me tell you – it works wonders!
Don’t be overly confident thinking you’ll just suddenly remember it while being overloaded with work, „Ha, it’s not rocket science, I’ll remember it!“Believe me, even today after months and months of practicing it, I still most of the time get too immersed in my work, There’s no chance I’d remember to close my eyes for a minute!
Several studies even demonstrated that closing your eyes after a learning session helps consolidate learned information! Most importantly, you’ll just rest your muscles for a little bit, and regain the energy to continue working.
Never underestimate the simplest hacks, they’re often life-changing!
15. Try the „shake it off“ therapy and energy booster method
Dance therapy—often abbreviated as DMT—is a form of psychotherapy that makes use of movement and dance to enhance one’s emotional, physical, and mental health. Strength, flexibility, reduced muscular tension, and improved coordination are among the physical health benefits of DMT.
The outcomes showed that the intervention enhances:
- depression and anxiety
- quality of life
- cognition, which is the capacity to reason and recall
- interpersonal abilities
The way I continuously practice dance therapy is that after every hour of intense, demanding, and challenging working time, I set an alarm as a reminder for dance therapy!
Get up, play the most high-vibe songs on your playlist, and just dance. Shake off all the tension, stress, anxiety, and pressure your work may put you through. There’s no point in being numb and under so much tightness and strictness.
I can’t describe to you how replenished, refreshed, and reinvigorated I feel after just 15 minutes of jumping, singing, and dancing my heart out to my favorite songs! You have to try it yourself!
the conclusion
Because many of these suggestions are interconnected, you must utilize them in conjunction with one another in order to plan an effective, fulfilling day. And, most importantly, you must stay consistent and determined. It’s crucial and major key.
Perhaps you won’t see the needed results right away, but you’ll surely see a noticeable change and improvement only if you stick to your intentions. No more binge-watching a favorite TV show all day long, no more profusely scrolling through TikTok.
Our life is happening while we’re watching other people live theirs.
DISCLAIMER! I do not own the photos on this post. Special thanks to https://kaboompics.com/ for the beautiful photos!
