Get more done: 5 productivity tips that work

Learn How To Get The Important Things Done With These 5 Productivity Tips That Actually Work!

Do you ever wish you could get more done? To go to bed every night having that feeling of relief and fulfillment, the feeling of, “Wow it’s been such a great day today! We finished so many things we wanted!”. Of course, you do. We all do. Well, there might be some exceptions:

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But, we think, even Bruno Mars is lying because eventually he got up and recorded this song. And then made his friends dress like monkeys to shoot the video.

What Being Productive Means

To us, being productive means using the time and energy we have to learn, to create, to truly relax and have fun. To basically make the most out of our life.

Being productive means finding time not just for work, but also for social life, relationships, for fun, self-care, exercise, sleep, cooking and eating healthy…For all the things that make life exciting, not stressful.

How To Have More Productive Days

If you’re not having those productive days in your life and are kinda overwhelmed, we know what you’re going through! We've struggled with productivity for most of our adult life and we're still figuring out how to get more done every day. Actually, no. Not how to get more done, but how to start and finish more things we actually want to accomplish and have in our life. Things that matter to us.

We're not a naturally organized person, but during the last 2 years, we came a long way. Not quickly, but with consistency. We learned that time blocking, scheduling and planning even only 90 days ahead don’t work for us. We learned that at the end of a busy day it will be okay if we did nothing and just relaxed or cleaned our kitchen or cooked something. Ah, that fun adventurous life.

And we learned that in order to get more done we needed to take breaks. That we're not a machine whose ultimate goal in life is to finish a work to-do list. Or to stick to a “plan” that she or someone else created for her. Our life doesn’t stick to a plan, even if we try hard and force it.

But mostly, we learned that We're not a failure even if the advice in all those books wasn’t working for us.

Our “Productivity Journey”

When we would finally sit down to do something that could potentially get us unstuck and closer to where we knew we wanted to be, someone would always call us or send us a text to go out. We would get mad at that person, because they’ve interrupted us, but we also never wanted to miss out. So we would “sacrifice” that day and spend time with our friends while still thinking about how much we needed to do to get out of the rut that our life had become.

Yet, somehow, little by little, that fear of starting, that procrastination cleared.

The first thing we did was we stopped watching TV, we found new hobbies, and found out we loved creating things.
We also started waking up much earlier
Lastly, we quit our desk job that was draining and started freelancing. It wasn’t stable, but it was providing us with enough.

Now all of a sudden we had time for everything we wanted to start.

Surprisingly having all that time did not solve all our productivity problems. There was something in us that just wouldn’t let us finish what we started. We overthought a lot, feared what people would think about us and did things half-way because they were never good enough to finish. What if people actually see this crap?

Then we remembered that we’re not here to compete with each other. That we all have a place here on this planet and everyone’s fighting their own struggle. So in that moment, we decided to fight ours. And we started. ONE TINY STEP AT A TIME We started getting more done. We started moving out of that rut. Even though our life was all over the place, the things that mattered to us long-term, we did. Not all of them. But we were making progress.

Here we want to share the 5 things we've found have worked for us and might work for you too. WARNING: It’s not simple, it’s not organized and it’s not a fast fix – but it’s real.

How To Get The Important Things Done:

5 Productivity Tips That Work

So here are five major lessons we learned during the last two years. They’re a little different than what you’ll see in most productivity articles. You won’t see any scheduling or Pomodoros (although we do love the Pomodoro thing sometimes). But we hope you learn something new and that these tips help you too!

1. Have A Good Start

Start your day with what matters to you most, long-term. It could be spending time with your family, taking care of yourself by doing some exercise or drinking a smoothie and it could be working on a project you want to get ahead with. For us, the two things we need to do every morning are writing and exercise. Once we have those done – we already feel productive, accomplished and it’s only 9 am. It’s gonna be a good day.

2. Keep Moving

When you have this great start to your day, you want to keep going. Squeezing the most out of every hour. In order to do that – be adaptive and accept things as they come. Sometimes there are delays, sometimes the things you expected to happen quickly take hours, or days – so don’t get discouraged and freak out about your plans. Forgive yourself for not being able to stick to your plan exactly. Be flexible and keep going and adjusting.

3. No Doubts!

Have faith and know everything is going to work out. Somehow. Whenever you experience setbacks, don’t make a big deal out of it – have faith that it will all work out and work out for a reliable. Don’t obsess over things not happening your way at the time you want them to happen. Be sure of the outcome and it’s unlikely to get discouraged. Discouragement and doubts can be huge time wasters and they slow us down.

Have more faith in the fact that you’re doing exactly what you need to be doing right now. This way you can stay patient and the things you want will happen. Whatever it is that you want, you can achieve by being consistent. And you can only be consistent if you’re patient, flexible, willing to learn and courageous enough to keep going. So no doubts.

4. Done Is Better Than Solid

Our sister told us this quote when she read Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” years ago and we love it. Our biggest struggle with getting big things done isn’t not starting them, it’s finishing those things. We can polish and polish for hours, sometimes days and things are never good enough. But the only way we know we can get more done is to let things not be solid. Whatever you start, the only commitment you need to make is to finish it. Do your best, but in a reasonable time, like 20 minutes. Don’t polish until you don’t want to see it anymore and have anxiety around that project.

5. Remind Yourself Of What You Did Get Done

If you’re like us, you probably have a huge to-do list that is impossible to finish in a day. This easily can make you feel bad about yourself and your ability to get things done. But at the end of the day, instead of looking at all the things you didn’t do and how much you still have to do, look at the things you got done that day. And not just at work. But for your relationships, self-care, body and well, just for fun! What are three things you’ll remember this day for? Write them down, appreciate them. It will give you this confidence that you can achieve anything you want and it will make you want to keep going.