Finding the Right Productivity Method You Can Use

No matter how determined you are not to entertain any distractions and finish your work as fast as possible, something will divide your attention. It could be a repetitive knocking noise from outside your house, a drilling sound from the construction site next door, or even the notifications on your phone.

All these distractions can easily take your focus away from the task at hand. So even if you have a clutter-free urban-industrial office desk that you’ve sworn can motivate you to work more efficiently, it’s still possible for you to be distracted by your environment or thoughts. Fortunately, you’re not alone in this. Many others are struggling to stay focused too, which is why many productivity methods have been created.

Here are five that you can try to help you stay focused and become more productive:

The Pomodoro Technique

Admittedly, it’s difficult to stay focused working on a task for too long because most people have short attention spans. Instead of forcing yourself to keep focusing, what you can do is stay focused for short bursts and quick breaks in between. This is the Pomodoro technique for better productivity.

With this method, you’ll be working for short 25-minute intervals, which means you’ll need to use a timer. When the 25-minutes is over, you can take a 5-minute break before repeating the process. Then, you can repeat the process until you go through your to-do list and accomplish all your tasks for the day.

Eat the Frog

One of the main hurdles to being productive is that you’ll want to postpone having to face a hard task for as long as you can, hence the procrastination. But a good solution to this is to simply eat the frog. This is a productivity method that will urge you to tackle the hardest tasks first, which are considered your frogs.

To identify your frogs, you’ll need to go over everything that you’ll have to do for the day and measure their level of difficulty. Once you’ve arranged the tasks from most difficult to least, you’ll identify your frog as the one on top of the list. Then, you’ll have to eat the frog as early as you can so that your day will be smooth sailing afterward.

Don’t Break the Chain

Finding the right productivity method is all about consistency. If you practice doing a method long enough, it will eventually become second nature to you. This is the mindset that the “don’t break the chain” method wants to teach its users — to enforce a productivity habit through visual stimulation.

You can do this by starting with a single goal for the day. Once you’ve completed the task, you can mark it as done on your calendar or tick it off your to-do list. Then for every day you accomplish the task, you’ll be able to continue your streak, which will then make it harder for you to break the chain because you’ve already come so far. It’s simple but very effective if you can enforce it continuously.

Time Blocking

Staying focused and productive is a result of good time management, something that everyone can proudly say they are skilled at. But that’s what the time blocking method is designed to solve. With this method, you’ll be blocking out time from your schedule to focus on your tasks and that alone.

You can start this by making a list of everything that you have to accomplish for the day and gauge how much time you’ll need for each. Then, you’ll have to block out those estimated time frames in your calendar so you can visualize how your day will go. This way, you won’t risk overstuffing your schedule with tasks and missing out on important deadlines.

Must, Should, Want

This last productivity method is hinged on your ability to gauge your short and long-term tasks. You start by creating a list of things that you have to do, based on what you must, should, and want to do. This will allow you to visualize your priorities and make it easier to tick every item off of the list as you go.

Under the “must” category, you can place urgent tasks that have to be done within the day because they can no longer be postponed. For the “should” category, you can place tasks that need to be accomplished but without an impending deadline. And on the “want” category, you can place tasks that can be done whenever you have spare time.

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing your go-to productivity method. You just need to choose one and see how it works for you. The best thing about these methods is that if you realize that your current method isn’t working, all you have to do is to stop and switch to another method. By doing a trial-and-error, sooner or later, you’ll find a method that you can stick with.