Boosting productivity is something pretty much everyone is striving for at all times. Whether you’re an average employee or an entrepreneur managing a team—there are lots of productivity hacks that will help you with your goals. In this article, we’ll be exploring 7 of these hacks that you can use to boost your performance—regardless of your targets.

7 Productivity Hacks Anyone Can Take Advantage Of

Let’s dive straight into our main topic of discussion and explore 7 productivity hacks. We’ll be exploring the following:

• Plan Your Day In Advance
• Take Advantage of Time Management Techniques
• Avoid Multitasking
• Manage Projects and Tasks in a Dedicated Place
• Prioritize Tasks Correctly
• Delegate Less Important Assignments
• Minimize Distractions

These are well-suited for a wide variety of people and offer lots of practical ways you can improve your performance. Let’s explore them in-depth now, starting with the first one.

Plan Your Day In Advance

One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to plan your day ahead of time. If you know exactly what you need to be doing each day, you can reduce the time you spend on planning. You’ll also waste less time switching between tasks as you won’t have to choose between assignments as you do them.

Planning your day ahead of time can have numerous benefits. It will reduce your stress and allow you to improve your focus. Implementing this strategy can also be quite beneficial for teams of professionals—like the one you might manage at your business. To plan the day of your team, you should use a strategy that will make the process simpler: time blocking or timeboxing.

Time Blocking and Timeboxing

Timeboxing and time blocking make planning tasks a lot simpler. Many professionals even use one of the two strategies to plan an entire week ahead of time. This can be particularly effective when combined with a technique like day theming, which will help your staff stay focused for longer.

As hinted by their names, the two strategies are quite similar to one another. While their differences are small, they will be noticeable at times. Check out our article comparing time blocking and timeboxing to learn more.

Take Advantage of Time Management Techniques

Managing your time correctly is a vital step to improving your productivity. There are countless methods of doing so out there, each with different levels of effectiveness. Finding the best time management techniques for teams may be a bit challenging. After all, there are multiple people involved. However, finding the best ones for yourself is often quite simple. Let’s explore a couple of popular examples you may use as productivity hacks today: the Pomodoro Technique and the “Eat that Frog”.

The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro technique is one of the simplest ways to manage your time. It simply involves working for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break. You must continue this cycle four times before taking a longer, 25-minute break. You can then start over and continue using the strategy till you’re done with your task.

The Pomodoro technique can be quite helpful if you have trouble focusing on your tasks to start them. Setting up a timer will give you a goal to keep working till the work period is over. Once your break starts, it’ll ensure your mind stays fresh to keep your productivity up during the work cycles that will follow.

The “Eat that Frog” Technique

“Eat that Frog” is particularly effective if you have trouble starting on daunting tasks. Frequently, these are assignments that are quite big, in which case you should make your life easier by splitting them into smaller ones. Using a productivity tool with task management functionality can help a lot in this regard.

But, if you can’t split a large task, you should start working on it first thing in the morning. Your ability to focus will be higher in the morning, allowing you to complete the assignment more easily. However, if your peak productivity hours aren’t in the morning, then you could move daunting tasks to whenever you can perform your best.

Avoid Multitasking

Lots of professionals think that multitasking can allow them to improve their performance. In the real world, however, multitasking has been shown to do the opposite. Juggling multiple assignments at once won’t let you achieve full focus on any of them. As a result, not only will you be less productive, but you’ll also be more likely to make mistakes.

Avoiding multitasking can be quite important in companies. If you manage a team of professionals, helping your staff avoid multitasking will help them perform better—both in terms of speed and quality.

Manage Projects and Tasks in a Dedicated Place

For teams in particular, managing projects and tasks is very important. Doing so in a shared digital workplace solution—like a time tracker—can help your staff stay focused in the long term. They’ll remain more aligned with your company’s goals, making it easier for them to make progress.

Managing your company’s tasks is also the first step to prioritizing them correctly—which is also one of the most important productivity hacks out there.

Prioritize Tasks Correctly

Within a company, different tasks will always have varying levels of importance. Determining how important each assignment is can be vital. It can help you get your assignments done on time, avoiding the time crunch and stressful situations. In the long term, these will lead to overworking and burnout, which have many negative effects.

You and your employees can prioritize tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix. This involves four different priority levels across two axes: importance and urgency. You should complete important and urgent tasks as soon as possible. Assignments that are important but not urgent need to be scheduled. You can then eliminate tasks that are neither urgent nor important, and delegate those that are urgent but not important. Speaking of which, delegation is another productivity hack we’re going to cover.

Delegate Less Important Tasks

Delegating tasks that aren’t that important is vital for managers and team leaders. Doing so may be challenging if you haven’t delegated before. You’ll likely be wondering who to delegate tasks to, when to do it, and how to determine if it’s necessary or not. But, once you figure out the answers to these questions, you’ll greatly reduce your workload and free up lots of valuable time.

Minimize Distractions

Distractions can have a measurable impact on your productivity. In today’s digital age, they can be found anywhere—making it challenging to avoid them. However, using the correct tools, you can reduce their impact significantly. For example, using WebWork’s app and website usage monitoring, you’ll be able to track what platforms you and your staff use at work. You may mark different apps and websites as either productive, neutral, or non-productive. The app will then remind you and your team to avoid using unproductive platforms—helping your employees remain focused for longer.

Tools That Will Help You Use Productivity Hacks Effectively

Before closing off this guide, let’s briefly explore a few tools that will make the productivity hacks we discussed more effective. These are productivity suites that will enable you to get the most from both your and your staff’s time. Key examples include:

• Project Management Apps: Project management apps will assist you in keeping better track of how you’re performing over the long term. They can be particularly helpful in managing the long-term goals of your business. Doing so in a centralized location will also help your staff stay on track with your company’s targets. This can improve employee autonomy at your organization, which has many benefits of its own.
• Task Management Apps: Managing tasks correctly plays an important role in taking advantage of various productivity hacks. There are lots of apps dedicated to this, which let you write down your tasks in a centralized place. You’ll also be able to add various key details for your tasks, like deadlines, contributors, and more.
• Focus Improvement Tools: While managing projects and tasks is often complicated, improving your focus can be surprisingly easy. There are lots of simple tools available that can help you maintain your focus when working on important tasks. Most of these are web-based timers that make different techniques more accessible. An excellent example of this is Pomofocus.io, which is excellent if you wish to get started with the Pomodoro technique.
• Time Tracking Software: As the name implies, time trackers help professionals track time. But, higher-quality examples like WebWork can do much more. They can combine the functionality of the apps discussed above and even more. Such solutions can be particularly invaluable if you manage a team of professionals, helping your staff perform their best at all times.

Final Thoughts

Taking advantage of various productivity hacks doesn’t have to be difficult. Most commonly, small steps will help you achieve measurable results—both in terms of your own productivity and that of your team. With the right approach and a bit of effort, you and your staff can perform their best at all times. Using high-quality productivity tools, meanwhile, will enable you to get even more from different productivity hacks.