Productivity is not about doing more, it’s about effectiveness.

We have a limited amount of hours in a day. One they are gone, you can not get them back. The way that you spend your hours can be very important. That doesn’t mean that you need to stress out now though. It means that you should make a plan to get organised and productive so that you can spend your future hours more wisely.

You need to find a balance in life. Think of the yin and yang. You can only work so hard before you get burned out and you can only relax for too long before you feel sluggish. Finding balance in this is so important and it’s something that you will develop over time.

There’s a few different ways that you can build a productive system and you can start doing these things today. There’s no need to put things off anymore. Get started now.

Drink some water and get a good breakfast.

This probably sounds pretty dumb but water helps fuel the brain and can hype you up for a productive day.

A lot of people end up skipping breakfast but it’s actually a very important meal. It gives you the fuel you need to start the day.

Give yourself some space and time to get organised.

Space is giving yourself time and a slot in your life to be organised. You can’t expect yourself to be productive and organised all the time so slotting a space into your day for things can really help.

What you can do is set an admin day, where you give yourself a certain amount of time such as one or two hours a week, on a certain day where you sit down and get stuff organised and completed. You can spend this time creating to-do lists and completing work for deadlines. I recommend setting your organisation day to be a Sunday as this will help you get ready for the week ahead.

Keep things out of your head.

Our minds are very busy places. This makes it hard to trust your short term memory. A good tip to live by is writing everything down. Use a brain dump system. You can do this right into your phone on the notes app. A notebook is a good place too but a phone is more handy as you usually have it with you wherever you go.

You can focus on organising your notes and brain dumps when you get a chance but at first, just having all the notes should help you remember what you were planning to do or what you need to buy or anything really.

Build a system that you can trust.

This might take a lot more time as you figure out what works best for you. You need a system that is effective for what you need. People love to share their beautiful journals online and don’t get me wrong, I love looking at them and trying them out for myself. However, that is not my system that I use for my organisation and productivity. I keep the system that I use on my phone which syncs between my phone, iPad and MacBook. This is much more helpful for me as it means that I can see what I need to get done no matter where I am as I usually have at least one of those devices with me.

Making sure that the system is with me at all times is important to me because I can get more productive when I’m out and about then too. For example, if I’m on public transport and it is quiet enough for me to focus then I can see what needs to be completed and do any odd jobs.

If it takes 5 minutes or less, do it now.

This is a rule that I try to live by and it saves me from ending up feeling overwhelmed at the end of the day. You know those jobs that you keep putting off because they are ‘too simple’? Well, get them done now!

Those simple jobs will add up until you have so much to do that it becomes overwhelming. Getting the small jobs done straight away will make you feel so much more free at the end of the day or week.

You will also feel so much better when you go to bed at the end of the day knowing that there’s no dishes to do, laundry to fold, or bins to take out.

I’m curious, what little tips do you have for being more organised and productive?