If you want to achieve a productive day, every day, it’s important to be intentional with your time. Planning out your day and prioritising your time ensures you set a daily intention to have a productive day.
Now, we all have unproductive days where things start badly, and despite our best efforts, things don’t get any better.
We start with the best daily intentions, but negative circumstances, moods, or situations can set the tone for the rest of our day. Instead of having a productive day, our days don’t go as planned, and we can’t recover our direction, focus, and motivation.
An unproductive day at work takes many different forms. Unproductive days can be caused by a lack of focus, people, or circumstances and situations beyond our control.
Sometimes, we don’t feel motivated or lack the direction to take action. A negative call or email at the start of the day can put you in a negative mindset that you can’t get out of.
An unproductive day can be caused by small things that set the tone for the rest of the day and you can’t seem to shake that negative mindset.
On occasion, the day feels all wrong. It starts badly, and nothing seems to work.
Now, there are a few things you can do that will make you productive every day. In this article, I’ll outline eight productivity tips that will help increase your productivity and ensure you achieve a productive day, every day.
8 tips to have a productive day
Here are eight simple tips to help you have a productive day.
1. Create a positive morning routine
Set a positive tone for a productive day by creating a morning routine that makes you feel good about yourself and the day ahead.
We’ll all have different ways of doing this. Your morning routine might involve exercising, journaling, meditating, reading, having time with your family, or writing down your to-do list.
To have a productive day, create positive habits in the morning that make you feel energised, excited, and focused. This feeling and mindset will make you more intentional about your time, which leads to greater productivity.
2. Start planning your day
Planning your day the night before or in the morning sets the tone for a productive day. Planning your day ensures you know your priorities for the day and are clear on what you want to achieve.
Taking the time to plan your day saves time in the morning and ensures you tackle your biggest priorities first. You can use my free daily planner to help you plan a productive day.
3. Identify your daily wins
Identifying and prioritising the three things you want to achieve each day helps you achieve a productive day whether you’re having a good day or a bad day.
On a normal day, being clear on the three biggest things you want to achieve that day gives you greater clarity, direction, and focus.
If you’re having a bad day and things aren’t going according to plan, you can take a breath and identify three things you could achieve that would still make a productive day.
4. Do one productive thing first
We can set the tone for a productive day by starting with something positive and then building positive momentum from there, or we can let something negative take control of our day.
If you do something positive first thing and you achieve the result you want, negative experiences won’t have the same impact. If something negative is the first thing you experience, it’s harder to get out of that mindset.
One thing you can do to help is to work on something positive before you open your email, check your voice messages, or take any phone calls. Avoid situations and people that could create a negative environment until you have done something positive.
5. Flip from negative to positive
It’s easy for negative experiences and situations to snowball into more of the same if left unchecked.
If you don’t feel motivated, do one thing that excites you. If you’ve had a negative experience, try to do one thing that makes you feel more positive.
You can change your day from a negative into a positive if you take quick action to shift your mindset and confidence.
6. Take a break
If you don’t have any direction to your day and nothing seems to be working rather than trying to fight through it, take a break.
Taking a break gives you the time and perspective to see things differently and come up with a different action plan. After some time away, you can shift to a more positive attitude and mindset.
7. Look for learning
If, despite everything you’ve tried, you can’t shift the tone of your day into a productive one, look for learnings so don’t experience the same situation again.
To have a more productive day, identify the causes, situations, people, and triggers that created a negative experience for you. Then, identify one action you can take for each of them to avoid them in the future.
8. Review your productive day
We often set the tone for a productive day the night before or in the morning. In reality, you can establish a different attitude and mindset at any time to change how the rest of your day goes or how you feel about your day.
The simplest way to do this is to review your day and identify three or four things that you achieved or went well. Your feelings about the day can shift by focusing on the positive.
Summing up
If you want to be consistently productive, use these productivity tips to increase your daily productivity. By planning your day in advance and imagining what a productive day looks like, you can focus on your priorities and manage your time more effectively.
How do you set the tone for a productive day? Let me know in the comments.
Productivity articles
For more productivity tips and strategies, read these articles.
6 tips to plan your week effectively
How to be more productive: 9 productivity tips
7 productivity tips to get more done
About the Author
Mark Pettit is a time management coach and speaker based in Colchester, Essex, UK. Mark is the founder of time management coaching company, Lucemi Consulting. He provides time management coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners across the UK and US.
Mark also provides time management workshops for leaders, managers, and teams. Book Mark to speak or run time management workshops by emailing enquiries@lucemiconsulting.co.uk.
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