Four Habits to Jump-start Your Productivity


Feeling frazzled? Like your to-do list never ends and an impending project deadline looms closer and closer without much progress? It’s time for a productivity reboot. Try out these five habits to help clear the noise and sharpen your focus. Let’s boost your productivity!

1. Work at a Standing Desk

In terms of healthfulness, standing desks aren’t exactly a replacement for exercise, but in terms of boosting your energy and focus, they’re on point. When we sit, we get comfortable, we get sleepy, we play around with toys on our desk or reach for a cell phone to “just check something.” At a standing desk, especially one with a small enough surface for just a laptop or notebook, we can focus on our work.

From personal experience, since moving to a standing desk, my energy levels while working (especially after lunch) have increased. I also like that I can take a few steps or do calf raises every so often without disrupting my flow. That doesn’t sound like much, but the ability to fidget helps my thoughts. That’s not to say if you commit to a standing desk you can’t ever sit while working again, the key is flexibility and knowing what it takes for you to be productive.

P.S. My “standing desk” is an organizational cube on top of my kitchen counter. I set up my work area each morning and disassemble for lunch and at the end of the day, it’s part of my work ritual. (Step 4).

2. Unplug

You might be confused by this one since so much of your work relies on connectivity. Well, chances are it doesn’t. Thinking it does means you’re in dire need of unplugging.

Imagine this: you’re working on an important report/project/fill in the blank. You’re really making progress then ding! 

You have an email. Oh it’s just Nancy, I’ll answer that later. Back to the report.

Ding! It’s Tom. This response should only take me five minutes…

10 minutes later back to the report. With your mind switching back and forth you’ll never really achieve a deep focus on the report or those emails.

Help yourself and your productivity by closing email and chatrooms (yes even those work chat rooms that are supposed to boost productivity), and turning off phone notifications. Let’s not even discuss social media, there’s no reason you should be checking any feeds during a work day. You can even put your phone in sleep mode but allow calls and texts from a select few people, like your kid’s school.

Interested in exploring more on this topic? Check out Deep Work by Cal Newton.

3. Set Goals

It’s easy to go through the motions and complete work, but what do you have to show for it at the end of the day? Week? Year?

If you don’t already have SMART goals for your career, what are you waiting for? For those of you that do have goals, simply stating a goal isn’t going to help you achieve it.

Create monthly checkpoints for each goal, i.e. what you’d like to have completed each month. Make these realistic. Then write out smaller, detailed steps towards those checkpoints that can be accomplished weekly. Write those steps into your daily planner and monitor your progress with weekly and monthly checks.

Hold yourself accountable, but also be kind to yourself.

4. Instill Pre-Work and End-of-Day Rituals

Rituals help get you into the mindset of work and allow you to leave for the day without the feeling that you’ve forgotten something important. For very select emergency instances it goes without saying once your end-of-day ritual is complete, halt all work matters (looking at you, 8 p.m. emailer).

What should your rituals be? Whatever gets you fired up and shuts your mind off at the end of the work day. A good pre-work ritual could be looking over your to-do list and reading some industry news with a cup of coffee in hand. Restrict the ritual to 10-15 minutes (you do need to get to work eventually!). The end of day ritual can be as simple as sending a final email or two and cementing tomorrow’s to-dos. Back when I worked solid hours without a toddler I’d work out at the end of the day. It was a nice transition that let me offload the day’s stresses.

A special note to those special jugglers out there (work-at-home parents, 9 to 5ers trying to launch businesses, and other hardworking superheroes): Do what works for you to delineate a work time versus life time that doesn’t take too much time. Being a stay-at-home mom I tend to work in bursts throughout the day. My morning ritual is quick (overview my to-dos, read a page or two of educational reading, and set up my standing desk). My end-of-day ritual which I tend to do after my son is asleep, consists of reviewing to-dos, checking emails, and preparing my schedule for the next day.

As with any habit, figuring out what works for you is a matter of trying something out and conforming it to your nature. The key to boosting productivity always comes down to boosting focus and motivation. For some it comes easy, for others it can be tough deciphering their optimal work conditions, that’s when trying out new techniques can make a difference.