You feel like you haven’t been very productive these past few weeks, months or year? Perhaps it is due to some of your habits that hinder your ability to create, experiment, invent and grow and mostly have fun.
If this year you have decided to get back on track, then here are 5 tips that can help you reduce distractions and empower you to give the best out of yourself.
1. Plan it out!
Just like you plan to work out or to go to the bank, you need to have slots in your calendar where it says ‘Thinking’, ‘Researching’ or ‘Creating’. If you keep yourself busy throughout the day, you are not left with much energy to produce, create and come up with new things/products. Make it a habit to challenge yourself and never consider these activities as a waste of time.
2. Control your information intake
As we go through the day, emails, Whatsapp, Viber, Facebook notifications are popping up. Certainly not what helps to get ahead efficiently in your day. What you should do is first declutter your social media accounts and keep only the pages/groups/friends you’re interested in. Remember a group you’ve signed up to 4 years ago may not be of interest today. And you don’t have to keep accepting what does not concern you anymore.
3. Determine frequency/duration of email checking/Social media browsing
The average person has five social media accounts and spends around 1 hour and 40 minutes a day on social media. That’s huge!! Facebook, for example, can be very interesting if you’re using it as a tool to promote your brand or business. And it can only be a total time waster. If your job title is not community manager, then you shouldn’t be spending all your time on social media. Fix a time of the day you want to check your accounts and limit it to a certain period of time.
4. Turn off notifications on your phone/ipad
Nothing is more annoying than a series of sound notifications urging you to check the messages and respond to them. The all-day-long beeps will kill your creativity and leave no room for inspiration. Turn off the notifications and sometimes you may also have to turn off your phone to be able to go deeper in your thoughts.
5. Choose one of two tools where you can be reached at and let people know about it.
Your clients, partners and friends should know what your preferred tools of communication are (normally phone and email). Let them know of that. If they try to reach you via Whatsapp or Skype, they may be able to receive a message from you telling them: ‘If your enquiry is urgent please phone me. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you when I’ll get to see it’.
‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.’
Henry Ford
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