8 Practical Tips To Be More Productive
Life can feel like it’s extremely complicated sometimes. One thing going on here and another one going on over there.
We’re always so busy and disconnected from ourselves. We get too caught up and focused on external factors or different metrics of the world. This also means that we often forget to do the things that ultimately matter the most.
A lot of the things here are probably things that you’ve heard of before. But I constantly encourage myself to reevaluate my habits and the ideas that make me who I am today. You should give it a shot too.
I hope this serves as a reminder to live more intentionally as often and as possible as you can.
1. Take Care of Yourself
Taking care of ourselves is a major aspect of living a better life. We can start by improving our sleep, diet, and overall health. Slow improvements upon these three factors compound into enormous positive traits in life. There are many resources online to give you a head start and a better understanding of this.
Creating healthy habits can really snowball into great things for your well-being.
For sleep, you can set up a constant schedule where you go to bed at the same time and wake up the same time no matter what the day (you have to be flexible and forgive yourself as life is not perfect, and you can’t predict everything that happens to you). Always try to get enough sleep, it’s recommended to sleep from 7 to 8 hours. Sleep is good for recovery, helps learning, is essential for memory, among thousands of other things that you’ve probably heard of, so never skip it.
You can set up a simple morning routine that gets you up & ready for the day. Make your bed. Maybe go on a morning walk. Maybe do some reading. Or Yoga. Meditation. A nice shower. Whatever gets you ready for the day. Don’t try doing too many things at once though because that’s one of the main things that prevents you from actually sticking to something.
You can do the same for the night. Try to lower screen use at least an hour before going to bed. It’s always good to set up a routine that helps you clean and organize for the next day. I like to summarize my day before bed, and get things ready for the next day (only takes about 10 minutes or less).
My favorite habit is to wind down is to read my way into sleep at least for the last 30 minutes of the night. I prefer reading fiction for that since it makes my imagination explode and be entertained. Non-fiction takes a bit more mental effort, and I don’t want my brain to get too active because it enjoys learning.
For a good diet, I think most people already understand. But the basics are that you should cut down on sugary things, and try to incorporate nuts, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. You should really invest in learning about it because you’ll be eating for the rest of your life, so might as well make it worth it. Here’s a vegan resource to get started.
Health goes hand in hand with a lot of things that I have discussed here, and that I will be discussing in the next paragraphs. Try to exercise and go on walks or simply be active most days of the week. Going out into nature to read a book or skip some rocks every few days is one of my favorites.
2. Take Time Off
Taking breaks throughout the day, and making time in our week to enjoy life and slow down a bit is always a good thing. Be it 15 minutes, an hour, half a day, a week, a month, breaks are always needed. Meditation is a very good way of staying mindful during these times.
Breaks are essential to keeping a healthy body and mind. In your calendar, you should always make time to relax and take care of yourself. We aren’t robots, and our bodies need maintenance.
Sometimes when you’re working on a project, it’s much more productive to take a pause and do something that you enjoy. Watch a movie, hang out with friends, play a game, go with family, you get the point.
I recommend reading books by “Cal Newport” or watching “Thomas Frank/Better Ideas/Nathaniel Drew/Matt Da’vella” on YouTube for inspiration.
3. Appreciate Life More
We should also remember to record important moments in our lives so that we can look back on them and appreciate them (unless you have an amazing memory of course). Journaling, writing, photographing or making art are a few ways of doing this. The more we remember, the longer our lives will seem.
Time goes by extremely fast depending on how you use it. How long our lives are is only relative to our experience and point of view on things. If you do the same thing every single year, all of it will blur into one big blob of that one thing that you did. This is why you should record moments in your life to make mental or physical checkpoints of your life. Or do really exciting things that sprout your curiosity.
4. Socialize With Other People
Socializing with others is also very important as it has many positive effects on your well-being. It also doesn’t matter through what lens we do this, just as long as we can express and share our thoughts with others.
I’ve been an introverted person. I used to get so exhausted from a simple conversation with someone else. But, besides the cons, it was always good to share my thoughts with others and to learn about other people’s experiences and perspectives on things.
If you don’t like to be around people in person. You could go and engage with others online and create relationships with people that help you grow and make you feel better.
5. Stay Active Whenever Possible
Stay active as much as possible to help our body and mind ease up. We can simply go for a walk, maybe go running, swimming or do some yoga. It really doesn’t matter what we do — the point here is to get our bodies moving and our blood flowing.
I think you probably understand this one very well, so I won’t add too much here.
6. Focus On What’s Inside of Your Control
Focus on what you can control. Remember that you decide how you want to respond to things that happen in your life. Many people hold on to a lot of stress because they focus on the wrong things.
Sometimes our minds get clogged with irrational feelings and thoughts because there’s something that we want to do, but we simply can’t. Taking a step back, and evaluating from an outside perspective can help you see that you’ve stuck yourself in a rabbit hole.
Don’t make things complicated, and focus on the things that you can actually do now, and not on the things that you cannot.
It’s all about making mistakes, learning from them, and going forward.
7. Keep Learning
Try picking up a book every once in a while. Engage in topics that you’re not familiar with. Keep your mind interested every day by challenging yourself with something intriguing. It’s always good to be able to help others while you receive and exchange each other’s broad knowledge and perspectives.
Keep your mind active and always be open to broadening your knowledge about other things.
8. Go Seek Discomfort
Lastly, we should try stepping out of our boundaries more often than not. This means doing things that bring us excitement or doing things that help overcome fears and discomforts that only hold us back from being the best versions of ourselves.
Usually, the person that we seek to be is in a future place that you might only be able to reach by doing the things that make you uncomfortable. As long as something can produce a positive outcome in your life, you should, every once in a while, push yourself to take risks. There’s never a wrong time in life to do this.
Now I know that it’s not all that simple and that many of these things are easier said than done. Most things in life require a lot of hard work, and I’m sure we all know that.
Just remember that putting in the effort and simply knowing that we at least gave it a shot is much better than doing nothing at all about it.
