How to be more productive, even when you’re tired. Everyone wants to know how to be more productive, and many of us know how, in theory, but we don’t do it. If you want to know how to be more productive, even when you’re tired, depressed, and lethargic, it begins the night before, when you plan your day.
Never plan your day the morning of. And every day should have a plan. I talk about it a lot in my book, the Lost Art of Discipline. If you don’t have a very simple plan, usually 1-2 important things that you have to do in the run of a day, then you’re going to do the wrong things. These things or tasks should be important. They should bring you closer to your massive goal. But once you identify what you have to do, the thinking about what you have to do is OVER.
Now, you shut off your brain and work. You no longer need to think about what has to be done, you did that the night before. Now, all you have to do is sit down and focus on the SINGLE thing that has to get done first. And there must be order! Never attempt to do more than one thing at a time if you want to be productive.
Shut off the phone. Shut off the internet if you can. Shut your mind off as far as thinking about what you should be doing, you know what you should be doing, now do it. It’s tough to do when you’re tired, and when your mind wants to wander. But is it? Meh, not really. Focusing isn’t that tough, it’s just something you do. You don’t think about anything else but the thing you’re to do in the moment.
If you have an idea that doesn’t pertain to the task, that you should write down, write it down and then get back to work.
Set a Timer. That is, create a work block of, say, 30 minutes, and focus for the entire thirty minutes. When the timer goes off, get up, move around, get outside, go to the gym, do something, just move away from your desk. Then, at your next work block, do the exact same thing, set a timer, focus on a single thing until that timer rings. By giving yourself a time frame, you have a challenge that isn’t endless. You CAN focus for 30 minutes, it’s tougher to focus if you don’t know how long you have to focus for.
Stay the course. Ignore everything but what’s in front of you. And pick up my book, The Lost Art of Discipline, it’s for sale on Amazon all over the world.
