13 Practical Ways of Boosting Your Productivity

I get this question all the time:

“Dipanshu, how are you online most of the time, and still getting things done with so much consistency?”

And to be honest- I don’t have a straight answer to this question.

It’s a series of protocols you need to follow to get most out of everything.

Let me share my top secrets here, for an ultimate productive life.

1. Deconstruct Your Goals

If you’re thinking you’ll publish 1 book every 3 months, it’s a fatal approach to start with.

Instead, I prefer writing at least 1 post every week. That would mean 4 posts every month and 12 posts every 3 months. And if you compile all these 12 detailed posts, you will be having 1 book compiled in 3 months.

This is the process of deconstructing. You create a big goal and then deconstruct it to smaller achievable targets.

2. Write Things Down

If you think you’ll remember whatever is important for you, you are wrong, my friend.

Buy a journal, and start writing things down.

Make a to-do list every day. The more detailed the list, the better.

3. Follow Parkinson’s Law

The problem is… you think you have time.

According to Parkinson’s law:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

So if you put deadlines to your targets — the self-inflicted deadlines- you’ll start accomplishing more in less time period. And that should be the plan.

4. Follow the 80/20 Rule

As per Pareto’s law:

“for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”

This means — your majority of results are coming from just 20% of your efforts.

Similarly, 20% of things in life must be wasting away 80% of your time. This may be scrolling through your social media feed or maybe reading too many motivational self-help books, etc.

We need to focus on 20% efforts that bring out the 80% result- and we just need to maximize that 20%.

5. Sleep Well

In this modern and trendy era of ‘hustling’, only a few people are promoting good sleep. And well, personally, I am sleeping for eight hours on an average.

Giving rest to your brain and body is such an underrated pleasure.

And once your body and brain are fresh, you can work better than others who aren’t taking proper sleep.

6. Stop Saying Yes to Everything

When you say no to anything, eg- You are saying no to a job at Google, you’re only saying no to one thing- a job at Google.

But when you say yes, eg- Accepting a job at Facebook, you’re saying ‘no’ to everything else — jobs at Uber, Amazon etc.

So choose carefully who you say ‘yes’ to.

7. Eat Healthy

As a thumb rule, 30g of protein within 30min of waking up (Source: 4-hour body)

Your diet will decide your overall performance.

If you eat junk food all the time, expect to fall sick and turn into a lazy bum soon.

Eat clean and healthy for an active lifestyle.

8. Learn to Delegate

Your ego will ask you not to.

You feel you need to do everything ‘your way’, but that’s not true.

As soon as you start to practice the art of outsourcing, you’ll start accomplishing more and more than you have ever done.

9. Don’t Read the News

Unless you’re preparing for a job where they’d ask you current news, you don’t need to be updated with every happening in the world.

If there’s something too important for you to know, someone around you will let you know. Or better, you’ll get memes on Instagram on the topic.

So just chill out and dump the news.

10. Track Everything

Use google sheets and put everything on it. Your budget, your expenses, your time schedule — every damn thing.

“What gets measured, gets managed.”

So, measure everything, and manage everything.

11. Practice Essentialism

When we don’t purposefully and deliberately choose where to focus our energies and time, other people — our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, and even our families — will choose for us, and before long we’ll have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important.

12. Don’t Multi-task

Multitasking itself is not the enemy of Essentialism; pretending we can ‘multi-focus’ is.

So what’s the solution to this?

Work on one thing at a given time. Period.

13. Do the Toughest Task First of All

As Brian Tracy says: Kill the ugliest frog first. Rest will follow.

And do it as quickly as possible.

Best Books to read about productivity?

1. 7 habits of Highly Successful people (Buy link)
2. Essentialism (Buy link | Summary)
3. Eat that frog (Buy link | Summary)
4. Superhuman by Habit (Buy link | Summary)
5. Deep Work (Buy link | Summary)

Summary

Here are my 13 secrets of productivity:

1.  Deconstruct Your Goals
2. Write things down
3. Follow Parkinson’s law
4. Follow Pareto’s principle
5. Sleep well
6. Don’t say yes to everything
7. Eat healthy
8. Learn to delegate
9. Don’t read the news
10. Track everything
11. Practice essentialism
12. Don’t multi-task
13. Do the toughest task first of all