To maximize your productivity and achieve peak performance in life and business, it’s essential to manage your energy. We can apply several strategies to help us. Humans are prone to subconsciously building up a list of tasks with no real direction. Focusing on managing your energy in your work, habits and life can help you perform at your best. Here are some areas to focus on
Maximize Your Productivity When Working Remotely
As technology advances and online businesses become more apparent, working from home or anywhere in the world has its challenges. When working throughout the day, managing your energy is essential. There are a lot of distractions that make us lose focus. By creating a routine, you will be conscious of any behaviours that deviate away from it. To establish a solid remote routine, think about the distractions, and unproductive activities which decrease your energy. Your distractions are relevant to the type of person you are. You may be inclined to fidget, or surf the web, while others may focus on feeling bored or burnt out.
Audit one of your days and be conscious of bad habits. Once you’ve recognized your list of distractions, you can develop a routine where remote life becomes more comfortable. When working from home or anywhere globally, the key is to manage your energy and not your time. While you may not necessarily have a boss to report to every day, having the required energy leads us to become more accountable, proactive and engaged in our work so we can provide peak value.
Hack Tip: Create a morning and night routine to help manage your energy levels for the day ahead. Here are some ideas:
-Get enough sleeping hours
-Switch off technology before you go to bed
-Read a book
-Eat a decent and healthy breakfast
-Exercise
Managing Unhealthy Habits
Fatigue, boredom and stress are the three common reasons for our bad habits. If we don’t take care of these areas, how do we remain productive and efficient? Our bad habits are there to compensate us with a benefit. For example, continually opening up Instagram can make us feel connected. Or giving in to procrastination helps us feel good. Although we’d like to remove bad habits, it isn’t viable. It would only become a short term fix where it’s unsustainable.
Fortunately, we can employ a more effective strategy that will help our lives and business excel. By replacing a bad habit with a healthier routine, we aren’t starving ourselves with boredom, stress and fatigue. You should know ahead of time what your response is when faced with the opportunity to apply a bad habit. What are you going to do when you get Facebook notifications? What are you going to do when you feel like stopping or starting an important task? Healthier habits are there to manage our energy and our focus.
Hack tip: Remove what triggers your bad habits. If you’re working from home a lot and find yourself binge eating, remove the junk food from your pantry. If you continuously find yourself browsing websites unrelated to your focus, set up a website blocker. Your unhealthy habits are designed by your environment. If you can remove the triggers and change the outcome, you will be able to effectively maximize your productivity and live more effectively.
Prioritizing to Maximize Your Productivity
During our workday or even personal lives, tasks are often prioritized to the immediacy of deadlines and other people’s needs. Where you see results is where you allocate your energy. While it’s easy to list your most important tasks from start to finish, that can be ineffective because the list tells us to be “busy”. It creates an image in our mind that we must complete everything on it to feel productive. By prioritizing tasks effectively and in line with our future goals, we can ensure that what we carry drives value to ourselves and others, and filters out the unimportant tasks. So how can we achieve this? Prioritizing should involve:
Creating a plan.
Allocating your blocks of time.
Working on the most critical tasks that efficiently brings the most value.
Hack Tip: To better maximize your productivity and effectiveness, work on the most critical tasks at the most optimal time. For example, a lot of us work better in the morning when we’re switched on. Set your time blocks to serve your most demanding tasks at your most productive period.
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
Throughout the day, you often perform specific tasks better at certain times. Our energy dictates when we need to rest and when we are reaching burnout. Many of us respond to higher demands by working longer hours, or putting in more work when we haven’t believed to have achieved ‘enough’ in a particular day. It inevitably takes a physical and emotional toll on ourselves where distractions rise, engagement declines, and energy decreases. The key is to monitor your energy levels, assess when you’re performing well and when your energy levels feel low. It may take a bit of trial and error, but these strategies can help achieve exponential performance in your business and life.
You can view my life guide to optimal productivity here