Do you find yourself constantly wishing you had more time in your day? Would you love know how to organise your time more effectively?

You’re not alone…we all want more time to do the things we love and we all wish there were more hours in the day! And isn’t it endlessly frustrating how some people live such busy lives and yet they still seem to be able to organise their time and fit so much more than you into their day?

It doesn’t seem fair.

We all want “more time” but the harsh reality is….there is no more time!

Time is undeniably the fairest resource of all. We are all given EXACTLY the same hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year…. The gift of time is the same for you as anyone else.

 “Where focus goes, energy flows.” (Tony Robbins)

The point of difference is how you choose to prioritise and organise your time. How you choose to do this will either:

• free-up time for you to do more of what you love and ; OR
• keep you spinning in that hamster wheel of scarcity and overwhelm

The less we procrastinate, the more productive we are.
The more productive we are, the more time we free up!

And your productivity is determined by WHERE you focus your energy.

Here are five productivity hacks that will help you allocate and organise your time more mindfully and effectively:

1. Know Where Your Energy Lives

Your energy fluctuates throughout the day, and we all have certain times of the day when we are more productive. Know where your energy levels are throughout the day and plan tasks accordingly. Where are your energy levels in the morning, afternoon, evening?

ACTION >> When your energy levels are low…do things you love, as these are likely to energise you. When your energy levels are high…do the more challenging tasks, or things you don’t love as much (they will seem easier if you have more energy!).

And remember to always do the bigger, more important, tasks earlier in the day.

2. Ease your mental load: park all your open loops

Open loops are your mental distractions or your mental to-do list – all the things hovering in your mind that you know you need to address, but haven’t got around to yet (ie: wash the car, have the difficult conversation, do the tax return, buy more cat food, ask for a pay rise etc)

Even when we are not consciously thinking about them they are still there, floating around in our subconscious mind, taking up precious space, time and energy, and preventing us from staying focused.

ACTION  >> We often have loads of these open loops so they tend to distract us from the task we are currently focused on. They also pull us out of the present moment and prevent us from being truly present.  ALL your open loops need to be put somewhere so they they are out of your head.

The first step to combat this is to do an initial brain dump of everything that is currently an open loop to make room in your mind for the task/s you need to focus on right now. Write down everything on your mental to-do list and get it out of your head.

3. Use the 80/20 Rule

We already know that time is the the most precious commodity so when you organise your time, being selective about what you allocate this time to is critical to increasing productivity and eliminating procrastination.

Once you have your list of open loops consider the value of the tasks / actions, as they will not be weighted equally. One single task may be more valuable than five other tasks combined. We have a tendency to do all the smaller, easier tasks first (which is a type of procrastination in itself!), however you will make significantly more progress when you are mindful of doing the most valuable tasks first.

ACTION  >> Use the 80/20 Rule to prioritise your tasks. Ask yourself: “What 20% of these tasks will help me achieve 80% of my results ? Which tasks will get me further faster?”

If this 20% of tasks is still too large, continue doing this until you have your hierarchy of tasks.

4. Eliminate Distractions….Start with your phone

We tend to be distracted by things in our environment simply because they are there and the access to them is effortless….and often, mindless. How often do you reach for your phone to check the date or time….only to realise 20 minutes has passed while you scrolled through social media, or googled “just one thing” you really had to know right now!?

Distractions will eat into your time and productivity like nothing else! And our phones are the worst culprit. Not necessarily because we are desperate to check our phone, but simply because it is there and it is effortless to do so.

ACTION  >> Put your phone on silent in another room, or in a drawer on the other side of the room, but somewhere out of sight. Once there is effort involved you will be less likely to check it, or at least the action will be a conscious one! And while you are there, turn off as many notifications as you can. 

5. Chunk it Down to Short, Focused Bursts of Work

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that most of us are only able to maintain proper focus for anywhere between 10-25 mins at a time.  After this, our focus (hence our performance and productivity) begins to taper off.

The Pomodoro Strategy is one of the most effective ways to manage time. It is a system of breaking your time into focused chunks, usually around 25 minutes in duration, to allow for your optimum performance and productivity.

One solid hour of work will be less productive than 2x 25 minute sprints. This applies whether you are working on multiple tasks in a day, or on the same task for 5 hours.

ACTION  >> Break your time into short, focused chunks of work. Set a timer for between 10-25 minutes and stop as soon as it goes off. Get up, walk away from the task you’re doing and do something entirely different for a couple of minutes.  Come back, refocus and repeat.

Organise your time and be more productive…Where to next?

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

Napoleon Hill

Once you have new ideas and strategies, the biggest challenge is actually implementing them into your own life. Learning or “collecting” tools will not get results. Learning how to implement them and having a system of accountability will!

Begin implementing these productivity hacks into your routine today and start to notice the changes in your energy levels, time and results!

Do you need support to organise your time and prioritise more effectively?