About This Episode

These days, there’s always interruptions and distractions going on around us. Especially when you are working at home, sometimes it’s not easy for you to focus on a long hour, maybe it’s because you have kids and your spouse at home too, and a lot is going on at home. Or even if you were alone, you may be can’t focus because your environment gets too quiet, and you might get demotivated even to start anything.

In this episode, I’ll share the mindset that you need to adapt and some of my top tips and strategy on being productive no matter where you are and at what stage in your life.

THE MINDSET SHIFT

Having a good mindset is the starting point of it. This means that getting up and making progress on what matters most to you requires cultivating a positive mindset. In my opinion, 80% of productivity is about having the right mindset. The rest is strategic planning.

Focus on the good things in your life right now, and understand that challenging situations and obstacles are a part of life. Life happens FOR you, not TO you. There’s always something to learn from the challenges that you are facing right now.

One of the ways that you can cultivate a positive mindset is to practice gratitude. I talk about this a lot because sometimes when we face challenging situations, we aren’t really aware of the good things in front of us. Keep a gratitude journal would help you to practice gratitude. Or you can make it a habit to share with your family at the end of the day; what are the three things that happened to you today that you are grateful for. Let all of your family share their gratitude with you too.

Secondly, you can practice positive thinking by asking yourselves,

“How you would behave if you are the best in what you do?”.

If you were the best chef in the world, or if you were the best writer or the best fitness coach or the best engineer, how would you behave day-to-day?

How would you respect your time and energy?

What intention would you have in mind when you start your work?

Where would you give your attention to?

What are the habits that you would develop?

Having a mindset shift and cultivating this awareness is crucial in creating a life with purposeful productivity. As entrepreneurs and small business owners, leaders and creators, we are in it to put the very best of ourselves into the world. We’re here to share our gifts to serve other people and make a bigger impact. Therefore, we must be actively aware of the behavioural patterns that we need to improve to get us from now to where we want to be.

Entrepreneurs, business owners and creators struggle with productivity a lot, especially when they’re working from home. It is not easy to create structure and stick with good working habits around your workflow when there is not necessarily a boss or other people holding you accountable. Therefore, you’ll get easily distracted with so many things and not actually getting anything done!

THE RIGHT INTENTION

Around here, we’re all about setting the intentions on what we choose to put our time and effort into every day. Like with all other things, you need to be clear on your objectives. Why do you want to be more productive?

This is what purposeful productivity is all about.

When you start living your life with intentions and level up the aspects you truly value, you would feel resistance, overwhelm, or fear failure. You might have some resistance whenever you’re implementing a new strategy to improve productivity.

You might think, “I am already crunching on time and have so much to do. Do I need to find a better workflow?” This is resistance. Your mind is resisting the change. Therefore, look out for it and expect it so that you can accept that emotion and move forward, regardless.

THE STRATEGY

Now that we’ve covered the mindset blocks that need to shift, we will look at the strategy you can implement every day. Creating these active habits and implementing them will help you move forward in your purposeful productivity journey.

Let’s get started!

1. Create a morning routine

I know there’s a lot of morning routines videos on Youtube out there. And sometimes, many of us try to mimic someone else’s morning routine, and that’s where they get it all wrong.

Here is the thing about morning routines: you have to craft one that works for you!

You can use others as inspiration, find what inspires you and test new things. Try to implement one new thing this week, stick to that routine for a couple of days and tweak it if it does not work.

And most importantly, don’t try to layer a bunch of different new habits all at once. Start with one simple thing you could do every day and then add more when it becomes too easy for you. Or if you started to feel bored.

2. Figure out when you work best and prioritize creative tasks

Maybe you are a morning person, or you’re a night owl! Whatever time you feel you’re most productive, set that time for your most important task of the day and protect it.

Here’s the thing, we often hear advice that you need to prioritize creative tasks in your day. Tasks such as writing, creating videos or anything that requires you to be creative.

But truth be told. It’s not really working for me. I have a one-year-old baby, so when I wake up in the morning, the earlier that I get up, he wakes up with me sometimes. And sometimes, this makes me stressed out, and my mind, instead of in a “creative mode”, I started to have this “fight-or-flight ” mode with my baby. Hahahaa.

This doesn’t work for me. So I tested when would be the best time for me to get my creative juice going. Especially when the kids are at home too now, I found that all the kids are more relaxed after lunch. And I am relaxed too. This helps my creative mode going. Thus I make it a priority and block this time for my creative output.

So yeah, listen and be aware of yourself when you can work your best. And protect that time. And this leads us to the 4th strategy, which is to create time blocks.

3. Create time blocks

Creating time blocks is one of my favourite things to do. It’s a way for you to get things done in time. Make chucks of focused working hours throughout your day. Maybe you can start blocking 30 minutes for writing each day. And work from there. Start small! And block the time for your most important things. Download a template of daily time block here, to get you started on time-blocking.

4. Plan your day the night before

This strategy has helped me so much throughout the years. At the end of every day, I will sit down with my planner and look at what I have done today and the goals for this week, and I plan the next day accordingly.

It takes me about 15 minutes to do it, and it helps me end the working day feeling fulfilled and start the next day with more clarity and intention. I don’t have to wonder and waste my time thinking about what I will do today because it’s been planned the night before.

5. Set non-negotiable tasks

Set up your non-negotiable tasks every single day. Prioritize the task that helps you move closer to your goals. Set a maximum of three tasks per day because this would help you to stay consistent. Ensure the three most important tasks you are working on are moving the needle from where you are now to where you want to be.

6. Create templates and checklists for repetitive tasks

Think about the small tasks that you need to do every time you are completing a certain project. For example, every time you create a blog, there are small tasks that you have to do each time, from starting with the idea of what to write to hit publish. Create a template for it! Your brain should not have to remember all of this tiny information; give yourself a break and create a template that makes you work more efficiently.

There are so many tools available for you to do this, such as Trello or Asana – you can create a template that you can pull out every time you’re working on a specific project. So you don’t have to worry about remembering all the tiny details each time you start working on these projects.

THE TAKEAWAYS

Remember, time waits for nobody. It’s priceless; it can’t be purchase or replaced, and you need to start respecting your time. So use these strategies and resources to level up your productivity and start working with intention; we call it purposeful productivity around here. Make time for things that matters to you so that you can inject more joy and happiness into your life.

Last but not least, my question to you. Are you more productive when you are working from home or less productive?

I’ve been in both situations in different seasons of my life; right now, I find a sweet spot of productivity while working at home. So how about you? I love to hear from you. So leave me a comment below. I’d love to know your thoughts!

Till next time!

If you like this episode, check out this next: “How to Implement Daily Self-Care”.

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