Monday comes and goes. Tuesday rolls around and before you can blink your eyes, it’s Sunday and you don’t know what you have been doing with your life all week. Then it hits you. Work. Wine. Bed. Here are five ways that you can be more productive no matter what day of the week it is. Whether you are wanting to motivate yourself to work out after you get home on a Monday night or you just want to make the most of your Saturday, read on to figure out some helpful tips to be more productive!
1. Get up early
I know, waking up is so hard to do. But when you don’t sleep until noon, you have so much more time for activities. You can clean the house. You can pick up the dry cleaning. You can deposit that check. You can walk the dog. You can grocery shop. The earlier you wake up, the more time you have to accomplish your goals for the day. When you sleep until noon or one, you wake up thinking your day is shot. Your brain has already shut out the idea of being productive. The only thing on your horizon is a nap.
2. Work out when you feel like taking a nap
Speaking of naps, when you feel like taking one, work out instead! I know, I know. You’re sitting there thinking, “But I’m tired. I don’t want to do anything but sleep.” However, when you work out, you will actually gain more energy than if you take a nap. Sleep is more of a depressant than it is an energy booster. But a work out will give you energy, make you healthier, and inevitably put you in a better mood!
3. Write a to-do list
When you write out everything you have to do that day, it holds you accountable. You will feel bad when that to-do list is staring at you all day long without anything crossed off of it. A to-do list holds you far more accountable for getting everything done than not having one at all. A little trick I have learned over the years is to write everything down the night before. That way when you wake up, your list is already waiting for you.
4. Set reminders on your phone
As the week goes by, you start to realize all the stuff you have to do. Instead of writing everything down in the invisible notepad in your head, set reminders on your phone. What I like to do is write everything down at specific times on certain days in my phone’s calendar. Then I set an alert to happen thirty or fifteen minutes before I actually have to get whatever it is I need done. This helps so much! Especially for forgetful people like myself. I do not do well with relying solely on my brain to remember things like to pick up dog food on Monday or to pick up the dry cleaning on Wednesday. I need a reminder to tell me when, what, and where I need to be at all times.
5. Incentive
Give yourself some incentive. If you get the grocery shopping done, you can go get ice cream. If you work out in the morning, you can go have a beer later with your friends. The only hard part is holding yourself accountable to this incentive. I have a problem with giving myself incentive for getting my to-do list done. What usually happens is I don’t get my to-do list done, but I still do the fun stuff later. Don’t be like me. Be more productive.
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About the author: Carly is a blogger for a home security company called Smith Monitoring, a provider of Houston home security. She’s actually so unproductive that it took her all day just to write this blog. She napped and ate ice cream before she got the motivation to do it.
