Stop Wasting Your Time: 5 Easy Ways To Be More Productive

You know how even when you have a completely free day and you have all the time in the world, you still get nothing done?

And you know those goals and the good habits you wish you had, but they just don’t happen?

Yeah, me too.

Here are 5 tips that have helped me become more productive and intentional with my time, and I think they can help you too.

1. You Need to Aim Lower

Yeah, you read that right.

Sometimes if you want to reach your goals and get things done, you need to aim lower and set easy goals.

This is purely speaking from personal experience, but I’d be willing to bet that I’m not alone in this.

When I set big goals for the day, I end up getting absolutely nothing done.

I’ll be at my desk trying to write an essay for class and tell myself that I need to just write the whole thing now. Then after that, I need to do two other assignments, then wash the dishes, then work out. None of that ends up happening.

I get overwhelmed and my brain shuts down. I end up staring at my blank document for stupid amounts of time and before I know it, the day is over and I haven’t checked anything off my to-do list.

If this sounds like you, then you need to start aiming lower.

Maybe you’ve had the goal of reading every day for a while now. But every day, the idea of sitting down for half an hour to read sounds pretty annoying and kind of a waste of time. So you put it off and promise yourself you’ll start tomorrow.

But what if your goal was to read for just 5 minutes a day. 5 minutes. That’s all.

5 minutes is nothing, and your brain knows that, so there won’t be any issue finding the motivation to do it. Odds are, once you start reading and you like your book, you’ll want to keep going.

And if not, just 5 minutes a day is 1,825 minutes in a year. That’s probably more than you’re doing now, right?

2. Set a 15 Minute Timer

When we know things are hard, especially when they take up a lot of time, it’s so easy to procrastinate and put them off.

Instead of telling yourself that you have to write an entire essay, what if you only had to write for 15 minutes then you are free to do whatever you want?

Can you write an entire essay in 15 minutes? I’d say no, but I can guarantee you’ll end up with more words on the page than if you sit there staring at your paper, trying to find the motivation to write an entire essay.

I honestly don’t remember who told me about this trick, but they said to set a timer and see how much you can get done.

Throughout my many days of procrastination, I’ve found that 10 minutes is too short to get anything done and anything over 30 is way too long and I get way too bored.

Somewhere between 15-20 minutes is the sweet spot for me. It’s enough time so I don’t feel rushed but it’s not enough time to get bored.

The next time you catch yourself procrastinating, set a timer for 15 minutes. You can play around with different amounts of time to see what works for you, but for now, start with 15.

Set the timer and just work. Put your phone away from you and anytime you start to get distracted, remind yourself it’s only for 15 minutes.

When the timer’s up, you can do whatever you want. You can take a break before setting another, decide you’re done for the day, or if the motivations still running you can keep working.

You’ll be shocked how quickly the time goes and how much you can get done.

3. Make an Everyday To-Do list

You know that satisfying feeling when you cross something off your to-do list?

Yeah, that’s exactly why you should make a to-do list for everything you want to do on a daily basis and habits you want to create. Even for the most simple, mundane, or “expected” things. Even the good habits you already have.

If you already have the habit of making your bed every morning, add it to your everyday to-do list anyway. This way, you’re allowing yourself that satisfying feeling, and when you go to cross it off, you’re forcing yourself to look at your list and remind yourself of everything else you want to do.

Get a planner or journal and write down the same to-do list for every single day. You can add and change things for each individual day of course, but it can look a little something like this:

• make bed
• 5,000 steps
• read for 5 minutes
• stretch for 10 minutes

Tips:

• Write tangible things that are easy to measure.

• Avoid open-ended tasks like “clean” or “workout”. These are hard to measure whether or not you completed them, and can overwhelm your brain- which could lead to not doing them at all.

• Write them in advance so they are ready to go each day.

• There are probably some things you only want to do a few days a week. If your goal is to work out 3 times a week, either write it into three specific days or write it in every day then at the end of the week make sure you’ve gotten three checkmarks.

• Leave a few empty bullet points at the bottom to add tasks for each individual day.

• At the end of each week and month, tally up how many checkmarks you have for each task. Write is as a score and try to beat it. If you made your bed 3 times this week, write down 3/7. Next week, aim for at least 4/7.

This is the planner I use. It’s cheap, simple, and it has the perfect amount of space to write in my daily to-do list.

This one is smaller and more compact if that’s what you prefer.

I also use this journal which is great for when your lists are longer.

4. Fully Allow Yourself Time to Relax

I don’t know about you, but I spend stupid amounts of time doing all the things you’re told not to do if you want to be productive.

I watch Netflix, scroll through social media, and I’d be embarrassed to count up the number of minutes I’ve spent staring at a wall.

There have been way too many times where I’ll be doing these things, and completely stress myself out over it. I’ll be watching TV and the whole time I’m thinking, “I shouldn’t be doing this right now, I have way too much stuff to do.”

So as I’m sitting there, objectively wasting time, all I’m thinking about is how much time I’m wasting.

So then I end up with a pit in my stomach and kicking myself for all the time I wasted, and when I finally make myself start my work, I’m too stressed out and anxious to think.

Sound familiar?

If you are going to do it anyway, why waste your energy feeling guilty and stressing about it?

If you give yourself full permission to spend some time on your phone or whatever time-wasting activity of choice, you will save yourself so much stress and actually end up being more productive when you go to do your work.

5. Break Up Your Day in Chunks

This is kind of an extended version of the whole timer thing, but when you have limited time to do something, you are more likely to get it done.

Again this is purely based on my own opinions and experiences, by no means am I an expert.

You know in school when you had weeks to do an assignment but you still wouldn’t start it until the night before it was due?

This is like that. This is for when you’re not on a tight schedule and have all the time in the world to do something but you still put it off and spend the whole day procrastinating. Or when you spend the entire day doing a task that should probably take an hour tops.

I’m not a psychologist. I can’t figure out why we do this, but I have figured out it’s just one of those that you have to work with it, not against it. Instead of kicking yourself for doing this, make it so you can’t.

Allow yourself enough time to complete everything, but spread it out in chunks throughout the day. Consider scheduling in time to do things and switch between things that require a lot of concentration and mindless activities. This way, you’re still being productive throughout the day but you’re giving your brain a rest.

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