How To Be Productive And Slay Your To Do List

Do you ever wish you had more time in your day? Become more productive and get some of those things in your “to do” list checked?

In my quest of being more productive while juggling being a full-time employee, starting my business, taking time to bond with my partner, my family and friends—things can get pretty crazy. I’m yet to find out how it will be once I become a Mom…yikes!

So in my search, I found this really useful exercise that I want to share with you, in the hopes that it will make that “to do” list of yours a little shorter.

How To Be Productive:

Write Down Your Mission Statement

This exercise starts with finding out what you want to accomplish in life. I know this is tedious and the last thing you want to do is spend hours “soul searching” for your “life mission”.

I get it!…. I’m with you on that one. But what you have to understand is that in order for you to prioritize and accomplish the things that matter to you the most, you have to find out what those things are in the first place.

Just take a look at your “to do” list and see if any of those activities will really make a difference in your life if you were to die tomorrow– I know morbid but you get my point.

Okay, now that we got the tough part out of the way, let’d’s do the fun part. 

Breakdown the Plan

Once you figured out your “life mission”, break it down to years, months and then weeks. This can be a 3, 5, 10 year plan or, how many years you want to plan for at this stage of your life.

Life is fluid, things will change along the way so I wouldn’t recommend planning longer than 10 years. Make this part as simple as possible, specially figuring out the exact year and month you will do something (the point is to have a goal to work towards).

You don’t need to be so specific either as to how you will accomplish any of this just yet. But you do need to have an idea of what you would like to accomplish and how you want your life to look like as a whole. This gives you a path in some sense and you will be more intentional with your time and thus more productive.

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” ~ Franz Kafka

Schedule Your week

Every Sunday or, any day that works for you, create your schedule for the upcoming week and write down what you want to accomplish that week.  Based on your mission statement, prioritize what really matters to you. The things that will actually make a difference in your life in the long run.

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” ~ Stephen Covey

Did you know that “deciding in advance when and where you will take specific actions to reach your goal can double or triple your chances for success.” This is according to Heidi Grant Havorson, a professor at Columbia University. And since I’ve quite a bit on my plate the next couple of weeks, I’ve scheduled my time accordingly. My calendar has become my new bff…lol

Take Inventory On How Productive You Are

Take inventory on how you spend your day and see how much time you spend on trivial things that are not helping you in any way. I’m certainly guilty of spending too much time editing  pictures for Instagram or reading the horoscope just to see if they got it right this time.

So next time you go down the rabbit hole, ask yourself this question—is this going to help me achieve what I want in life?

I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment and let me know how you stay productive.