Looking for productivity tips to help you better manage your daily tasks and manifest your desires?
Prioritizing life goals is common sense for some people; it’s a skill given to them at birth. For the rest of us, prioritization is a skill that we need to learn, develop, and master.
You get to a certain point in life when you realize that time is slipping away. Life gets more real. Parents might not be around much longer, your career responsibilities increase, having kids adds another layer of complexity, and time for personal hobbies becomes slimmer.
So, if life gets more real, then the way you spend your time needs to become more intentional.
Relying on your gut and intuition alone isn’t going to cut it. You need a few productivity tips and techniques to fall back on when you’re on the brink of overwhelm.
Productivity Tip #1: Write Down Your Goals Daily
Actively, think about your goal first thing every morning. If thinking about it feels elusive, write your goal down every morning. I used to knock on this tip secretly. I wrote it off as weird and way too serious. But I take it back; it works!
In the past, if you have ever set a goal and then forgotten about it, then I strongly advocate this step. It’s not that you lack willpower; it’s just that you didn’t have a way of reminding yourself. It’s not like they teach you these things at school. Initially, training yourself to write out your goals daily feels odd, but I promise you’ll soon be hooked.
You can either write your goals down every morning, evening, or both. You can also look into a mirror and read your goals aloud every day as well!
Productivity Tip #2: Focus on One Goal at a Time
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits (audible), recommends focusing on one goal at a time. Sometimes people fail at accomplishing their goals not because they suck at achieving their goals but because they have too many competing goals.
Focusing on one goal at a time optimizes your day for success. If you are working on building an exercise routine, then make exercise a priority for that day and make everything else secondary.
Making one goal a priority will help you alleviate pressure and push through resistance, and you’ll automatically feel less overwhelmed. Chances are, everything else you need to do will get done.
Productivity Tip #3: Do Your Hardest Task First
You may have heard of a self-improvement technique with an amphibian in the title. Brian Tracy, the author of Eat That Frog (audible), developed this idea from Mark Twain. The frog is your big, ugly, challenging task of the day. Mr. Tracy recommends accomplishing the biggest, ugliest, and hardest frog first.
This technique works.
Let’s say you are building a habit of exercise, and it has been a tough habit to work on for you. Make your workout the first thing you do every morning. That way, you’ve already eaten the big ugly frog in the morning and won’t feel tempted to procrastinate.
Eating your big bad frog first thing in the morning will make you feel accomplished and motivated for the rest of your day.
Productivity Tip #4: Use Warren Buffet’s Top 5 Technique
Prioritization is the act of measuring the importance of a task or goal and then acting on it. Optimally you want to find the task that will return the most value. There are many ways to figure out what’s most important to you, but Warren Buffet, one of the world’s richest men, has an interesting spin on a pretty simple focus technique.
Live Your Legend’s blog calls it Warren Buffet’s top 5 techniques.
The short story goes that Buffet wanted his long-term pilot to go and achieve more in life. Buffet then asked his pilot to make a list of his top twenty-five dreams and goals. His pilot made his top twenty-five list.
Buffet proceeded to ask his pilot to circle his top five most important dreams. After his pilot chose his top five, Buffet went on to ask his pilot what he would do with the other twenty.
His pilot answered that he would most likely work on them intermittently as they come second but are still significant. Buffet replied, no, you must avoid the other twenty at all costs! Something to that extent.
So, Warren Buffet’s lesson is, don’t even let your second best distract you!
Productivity Tip #5: Use Brian Tracy’s Planning Method
Planning starts with writing things down. Try to keep everything in one place, like a notebook, at least in the beginning. Get into the habit of writing to-do lists, but not just any to-do list. You have to try Brian Tracy’s method.
Tracy calls his method, the ABCDE method, a “to-do list on steroids.” And rightfully so!
With the ABCDE method, first, you’ll want to create a to-do list. Get out your journal or a sheet of paper and do a brain dump. Write everything, minor and major goals or tasks, down.
Afterward, assign each task or goal with the appropriate ABCDE label. The meanings are below.
- A for the most important tasks
- B for tasks that have minor consequences
- C for tasks with no consequences
- D for tasks you can delegate
- E for tasks you should eliminate altogether
Finally, you want to funnel your tasks into your four to-do lists.
- Master to-do
- Monthly to-do
- Weekly to-do
- Daily to-do
Before you do that, though, rewrite all of the tasks you are keeping onto a new master to-do list.
Next, break down the tasks or goals onto your monthly to-do list. Funnel the monthly list down and create weekly to-do lists, then funnel that down and make daily task lists.
Take Away
So there you have it! The legends and the masters out there rely on tried and true techniques to prioritize their life and goals.
Next time you are on the brink of overwhelm and are struggling to figure out what to do first, remember to write your goals down daily as a reminder, focus on one goal at a time, Eat That Frog, try Warren Buffet’s top-five technique, and Brian Tracy’s ABCDE method.
I hope you enjoyed the article! Good luck, and have fun!
