Easy Productivity Tips for ALL Areas of Your Life

These are all productivity tips narrowed down to specific areas of your life!

My last blog post before this one was about self-care for all areas of your life. This time, I decided to do productivity tips for all areas of your life, (and maybe in the future do more for other categories!)

In short, being productive is about maximising your time and making the most of our your time. Time is a very important asset, because once it’s gone we can’t get it back. That’s why we want to put our time into the right places.

So how can you make the most of your time for your health? Your finances? Your personal growth in general?

That’s what this blog post is going to address. it is going to address specific productivity tips for those areas of your life.

Make HEALTH Productive

Making our HEALTH as productive as we can is of course, very important. We all know that making the time to take care of your health is going to do goods for us, and there is nothing to lose.

But how exactly do we make HEALTH productive? It’s all about making life easier for us… a healthy way.

Meal Prep your food ahead of time

I’ve mentioned this in a few posts already… not only is meal prepping a really good money saver (from impulsively buying food because we didn’t have time to prepare it) but also a good time saver. Yes, cooking a meal may only take 15 minutes, depending on what you’re cooking, however, we’re all about saving even those little blocks of time.

Imagine taking 15 minutes to cook a day, that’s already 45 minutes! Those 45 minutes we could use to do something else.

However, when we do it at the start of the week, and we prepare our food beforehand, yes it may take “‘longer” during the weekend, but you save yourself hours of cooking throughout that week. Especially if you’re going out to school or to work, you probably don’t even have time to cook in the morning, and end up buying food.

But if you prepared it ahead of time, all you have to do it take it with you to work, heat it up if needed, and then BOOM. Time saved and money saved.

Also, it’s a good way to prepare healthy meals ahead of time. While there are plenty of food places now that offer healthy options, it’s still a good idea to prepare meals from home, because you know what you’re putting in it.

30 minutes of exercise

When you think about it, 30 minutes is not much. We all have 24 hours in a day, take 30 minutes away, we still have 23 hours and 30 minutes. For the sake of this productivity blog post, we are going to break that down even further.

Let’s say we slept the 8 hours, now we have 15 hours and 30 minutes left.

Now, let’s say we worked for 8 hours, now we have 7 hours and 30 minutes left.

Let’s say we commuted one hour there and back, now we have 5 hours and 30 minutes left.

Let’s say that we spent about 15 minutes eating 3 meals a day (45 minutes), now we have 4 hours and 45 minutes.

Let’s say that we spent about 1 hour getting ready, now we have 3 hours and 45 minutes.

When you break it down like that, you do in fact have time to exercise.

Nevertheless, exercise is something that is very important for us, and I think a lot of people have established that already!

2L Water Bottle

Okay, I’m no expert on how much water you should drink a day, but let’s say the average is 2L.

This is honestly just my personal preference, and I’m going to give you my reasons for it.

Having a 2L water bottle is the most productive thing you can do. Why?

Well, did you know that refilling your water bottle takes about less than 2 minutes?

Wait, Lauren you’re suggesting a 2L water bottle idea because it saves 2 minutes?

Well, you didn’t let me finish.

Let’s say I had a 500mL water bottle, and I refill it 4 times a day, it’s about less than 8 minutes in total.

But still, that’s only 8 minutes!

Okay, hear me out here. You still spend time thinking about how many bottles you have refilled so far, and you still have to go to the water station. Honestly, sometimes the nearest water station is a longer walk than refilling the bottle in itself! We’re all about saving time here, even those little blocks of it. Because as we all know, those little blocks of time add up.

By having a 2L water bottle, yes it’s big, but it’s very productive. Yes I know, I just called a 2L water bottle productive.

Because when you think about it, you only need to worry about finishing that bottle by the end of the day. If you had finished that bottle by the end of the day, then you know that you drank your required water intake.

Get a Health Tracker

Okay, this is my number one suggestion and my opinion, but don’t worry I’ll give you full reasons for this.

(please note that this is not a sponsored post, I just really love the product!)

Get a health tracker – whether that is a FitBit or an Apple Watch, or honestly any other health tracker that you can find. Any sort of smart watch.

If you’re willing to invest money into any sort of tool, it’s a Health Tracker… my goodness it does wonders!

My FitBit is honestly my best friend. It tells me how many steps I have done in the day, it notifies me if I went almost an hour without moving around, I can track my water intake (prior to using a 2L water bottle), it tells me when I’ve exercised… it’s a great tool.

Sometimes, to make things more productive, it may be worth investing money into tools that will help us save our time. Let me tell you, my FitBit helped me save time by counting my steps so I didn’t have to second guess how often I moved around today.

And another kind of funny reason why it’s worth investing your money into a health tracker is because it’s going to push you to get fit, move around, and make the most out of it… after all you spent your money on it anyway!

It’s funny with how we tend to push ourselves more when we know we paid for something. I mean, if you sat in a workshop that you know you paid for, you’re going to be paying your full attention right, compared to a free workshop. Same with getting a health tracker. You know that if you paid for it, you’re definitely going to be using all the features for it.

Set Health Goals

Let’s clarify here that I am not just talking about weight loss or any weight goals. I’m talking about any sort of goals related to your health.

Some other examples may be as simple as exercising more or eating healthier meals, or even cutting junk food out of your diet. The reason why it’s important to set goals for your health, is because it gives you direction in terms of all the health habits that you do.

Because let’s face it, many habits attempted to be built are eventually broken because of the lack of reasoning behind doing that habit. For example, one may break the habit of reading, because they don’t have a strong reason behind why they want to start reading.

Or maybe one may break the habit of eating healthy, because they either don’t have a strong reason behind it, or they don’t remember that reason.

Having a goal gives you something to think about at the back of your mind. When you find that things are too hard, you have the end goal to remember why you started in the first place.

Let’s say you set the goal to exercise more because you want to stay active and fit, so you don’t have any future health problems. When you think about giving up that habit, you remember that specific reason in the first place.

Check out my blog post on setting goals, which explains why you should make them specific. The more specific you are, the less likely you are to break those goals.

Make Finances Productive

Alright, feel free to agree or disagree with me on this… but finances could cause a lot of stress.

That’s why, it’s a good idea to make managing our finances as productive as possible, so we can save ourselves from stress in the long term.

Imagine putting it off for so long, only to find yourself needing to track so much expenses, income, and deductions.. imagine how much time that would take! That’s why you want to manage it regularly so it saves you from all the stress.

Cutting Down Method

If you’ve read one of my blog posts on a weekly financial management routine you would probably know about this method.

It’s pretty simple. All you do is cut out the costs of subscriptions or memberships that you don’t actually use.

For example, do you really use that fan-base membership of one of your favourite influencers? If you don’t really find yourself using it, then maybe that’s something you want to cut down.

What about that gym membership? Do you actually use it? Maybe if you start going to the gym you can make the most of its value, but if you don’t plan to go to the gym at all then you may want to cut it down.

The cutting down method is also good if you’re currently to subscribed to anything that doesn’t help with your habits. For example, you want to break your TV habit, or you want to watch less TV to be more productive with your time. You can cut out your Netflix subscription to help you break the TV habit, and be more productive. As you can tell, cutting things out doesn’t just save you money, it can save you time as well! (and make you more productive!)

Have a Weekly Financial Money Routine

I’ve got a whole separate blog post on this for you to have a read of! I’ll be honest here, this financial money routine is not my favourite routine of the week… but let me just say that it has saved me a lot of stress later on.

You can read the blog post on the weekly financial money routine but I’ll outline briefly those steps:

1. Note down your expenses
2. Note down your income
3. Note down your deductions – save time during tax time!!
4. Create your spending plan – saves time ahead of time!
5. Transfer your savings (although, it should definitely be automated!)

As you can see, by tracking your expenses every week, you save time in the long term tracking how much you spent over a long period of time.

By tracking your income every week, you make sure that you are being paid correctly and on time, instead of spending time later on tracking all that if any issues arise.

By noting down your deductions you save yourself time during tax time! Because imagine going through weeks and months of deductions.

Create your spending plan – everyone tells you to budget, and it is indeed very important! Each week, you want to make sure that you are spending less than what you are earning.

And then transfer your savings, of course is for your future. Your future self will thank you later for being productive with your money, saving them some money for the future.

Think Long-Term Before Every Purchase

Something that I’ve been doing for a while now that had prevented impulsive purchases is thinking long term.

What it does that when you’re thinking of buying something, you think about what the benefit of getting this purchase will be in the long term.

For example, you saw a dress that you want to buy. Before buying it you think about what the benefit of getting the dress will be in the long term. “Looking good in it” is a good reason for the short term, but what about the long term?

Unless you have no clothes or hardly any clothes in your closet, it’s probably not going to be a beneficial purchase for the long term, especially if you have many clothes in your closet that you hardly wear.

Another example is that you saw a computer that you want to buy. You think about the long term benefit. You realise that having this computer in the long term is actually going to be beneficial in the long run because the features are better than the one you currently have. You know that it’s going to make you even more productive.

So the next time you find yourself about to purchase something, think about the long term benefit of it.

Make Relationships Productive

If you’ve read my previous blog post on how to invest in yourself, you’ll notice that one of those important investments are your relationships… your family, your friends, whoever you are close to.

We talked about how people value time more than gifts, and hence your energy and investment should be put towards making those memories and spending time with those close to us to build those relationships.

So how do we even make relationships productive?

Actually Set & Schedule in the Time – COMMIT to it like an important appointment

Yes, it sounds like a typical advice, but it’s true!

Think about how you schedule and set times for meetings with other people, and commit to it. On the day of the appointment you make sure to make it as much as possible, unless something out of your control comes up.

I’ve read this story from one of the email subscriptions I’m subscribed to, (LifeHack) about a person who had set a time to work on a treehouse with his 9 year old son. He never put that time in his calendar, and on the day, he completely forgot about it because he had extra things to do at work.

He realised that he forgot when he got home. He remembered his commitment the moment he saw his son fall asleep on the couch dressed like a builder. His son was upset and felt like he wasn’t important to his dad.

My biggest takeaway from this story was that, we need to treat set and agreed times with our family and friends like an important appointment. We wouldn’t dare to miss an important meeting, appointment, and interview, why would we do the same to our family and friends?

That story I mentioned above had a good ending, the 9 year old son forgave his dad, and the dad started setting aside time, and putting it in his calendar that a certain time and day was when he was going to build the treehouse with his son.

Hence, sometimes, as silly as it sounds, we need to schedule things in and treat it like an important appointment.

Reflect Regularly On Who You’re Friends With

Okay, this may be a bit agreeable or disagreeable. In fact, it may sound a bit harsh. I heard this from a few people and I’ve tried this myself. I’ll say that this is actually pretty useful.

There may be times when you may want to consider reflecting who you’re surrounding yourself with on a daily basis, and who you are friends with.

When it comes to who you’re surrounding yourself with on a daily basis, you’ve probably heard of the quote, “you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with most”, and as much as I’ve denied that it’s true, I’ve accepted that it is. It is true, the five people you surround yourself with most are who you will eventually become.

Then when it comes to who you are friends with, they may not be your close friends, they may not even be people that you regularly surround yourself with. That’s why it may be worth reflecting on whether this friendship is one-sided or if you guys actually have same or similar values and passions…. is the friendship actually real? Yes, I know not a pleasant question.

If there was one thing someone told me about friendships that stood out over the years, is to never underestimate the power of good friendships and bad friendships.

Make Career/Study

/ Business Productive

This is for all those who are studying, working, or even have a business!

When you think about it, when people think of productivity, they think of filling up your schedule with tasks related to work/study/business. I’m not going to outline productivity tips you probably already know of. I have heaps of productivity blog posts that you can read to improve your productivity!

Instead, I’ll give you some tips that will help you level up in whatever you do!

Invest time (& even money!) into courses & books that can improve your skills

This is a big one!! A part of me is including this as one of the tips because I’ve been so obsessed with taking courses lately, free or paid!

Here’s why it’s going to be worth your time…

You’re going to save time!

A big benefit of taking a course (whether you get it for free or you pay for it), is that you have all the resources, the tips, and all the applicable actions all in one place!

You save time from researching on Google, and trying things out yourself. Most courses, if you look deeper before investing into it, are run by someone who had experienced the same struggles and made mistakes… they includes those in their course. By learning from someone else’s own mistakes, you save time in making those same mistakes.

Most times, courses are easy to follow along, and you can go at your own place! Either way, by the end of it, you would’ve learned valuable skills that will help you improve in your job, business, or even your studies. You save time from having to figure it out yourself, and just relying on the good ole’ Google.

If you invest money into a certain course, we’ll be straight up here and say that the return for that investment may not be monetary! But if you applied what you’ve learned and improved as a result, then you already got a big return!

If applying the things you learned from a paid course allowed you to become better at your job and business, and led to bigger opportunities like a promotion, or more profit, then technically you did get a monetary return from that!

Overall, it helps with your productivity to have courses because you save the time in trying to figure it out all on your own.

Manage and Organize Your Time Well

Yes I know very obvious… but it’s still really important.

You know that whether you’re studying, working, or have a business, you NEED to have good organization and time management skills! I’ve got blog posts on the two!

I won’t go too much into detail, I’ll just highlight the most important tip to having good organization and time management.

Just remember that time management is actually more about making the most of the time that you have, and using it effective and productively.

While life does get busy sometimes, it’s hard to get on top of everything if you always feel like you are lacking time. That’s why it’s so important that in whatever you do you:

• Prioritise your goals and commitments
• Are aware of what distracts you

Together with that, you also want to:

• Plan your time by scheduling your week
• Know your temperaments – know what time of the week you work best

It’s also very important that whether you work, study, or have a business, you:

• Do projects one at a time – no multitasking!!
• Organise your work space – make life easy for you!
• Develop systems that work for you

Ultimately, organizing and preparing is a must. We need preparation and planning to work effectively, improve our results, and make the most of our time.

Set Routines

Routines are honestly a game changer, and I mentioned a whole bunch of routines in the blog post on essential routines for personal growth.

Routines are pretty much a series of habits recollected in steps. Since habits are automatic, you find yourself doing that habit without thinking about it. When put into a routine, all those habits becomes automatic!

That’s why when it comes to your work/study/business, you want to formulate a effective work/study routine that will pull you into the direction of success.

You want to fill your work/study routine with effective and lifechanging habits that will allow you to work effectively, and move you closer to your goals.

That’s why it’s important that when formulating a work or study routine you:

1. Prioritise your goals, projects, commitments.
2. Create a NOT-to-Do List – know exactly what distracts you so you can find ways to keep them away from you.
3. Plan ahead of time – I think we’ve established so far that it’s important to manage and plan your time so that you’re able to get completed what you need to get done.

By creating a routine that allows you to automate your work/study/business life, you are doing many favours to your productivity!

Make Self-Care Productive

Yes, this is a thing, you can make self-care productive!!

How can self-care be unproductive? Well, self-care can be productive when you don’t ever find yourself with the time to have self-care, or when the time comes for your self-care, you have no idea what you do, and you do an activity (such as go on social media) that ends up draining you instead of recharging you.

I’ll only mention one way to make your self-care productive, and I’ve done a whole blog post on this before – creating your own self-care routine!

Let’s quickly summarise it below, read the whole blog post for more expanded steps!

1. Set your self-care time – pretty simple I know, but if you always find yourself never having the time to have self-care, it may be because you never set the time. You want to set the time, SCHEDULE it in, and treat it like an actual appointment! If you never miss meetings with other people, don’t miss the meeting for you.
2. Have a list of self-care ideas handy – another simple step, but if you always never know what activity to do, then this step is going to help you! You want to brainstorm like crazy and keep that list, especially since there are so many self-care ideas out there. You want to pick and choose what activities work best for you, or even activities to try! Either way, by having a list, you save yourself time from thinking about what to do next.

Make Personal Growth Productive

Last but not least, you can make your personal growth productive!

Growing yourself is not supposed to be too overly complicated. You want growing yourself to be as simple as possible, especially if you’re going to be going through some challenges along the way that will test that growth. Here’s how to make personal growth producitve:

Study Routine!

Yes, I did say that. You need a study routine for your personal growth. In fact, I did a blog post on why you need a study routine for your personal growth.

It’s actually no different to a study reason for school. Here are the reasons why you should have a study routine for personal growth, so you can make personal growth productive:

• A study routine gives you consistency, and personal growth requires consistent effort.
• A study routine is for learning, and you need a lot of learning for personal growth.
• A study routine allows you to manage your time effectively, and you already know that this is going to make personal growth productive.

By having a study routine for personal growth, you can work on any area of your life you think needs improvement, whether that’d be your actual physical health, mindset, self-care and self-love, or even career… it’s up to you!

Your study routine allows you to do courses, watch YouTube videos, read books, listen to podcasts, and just spend time focusing on an area of your life you want to improve on. It increases your productivity because you know exactly what you need to work on, and you don’t waste time on figuring everything out on the spot.

Break those Bad Habits

Because honestly, having bad habits are a waste of time. Just think about it, having procrastination habits obviously wastes time. Having bad study habits wastes time because you don’t even study effectively. Having bad sleeping habits waste time because you waste time during the day, suffering from the consequences of lack of sleep.

Hence, a good way to be productive with your personal growth (or in general actually) is to break those bad habits. Since we’re talking about personal growth here, we’ll outline bad habits to break in a personal development journey.

1. Bad time management – you were kind of expecting this weren’t you?
2. Building new habits all at once.
3. Consuming bad content
4. Not asking for help
5. Taking too much on

Remember that taking care of your health counts as being productive

In my blog post on the mistakes people make when trying to be productive, I outlined how people usually associate productivity as work tasks, business tasks, study tasks, and not taking care of your health in general.

You may see schedules of people just including work tasks, but exercise and eating is no where to be found. In reality, when you create your schedule, you’re not just considering all the work-related tasks. You’re also including everything related to your physical and mental health, and that goes towards your personal growth.

For instance, if we lacked exercise, sleep, and don’t have good eating habits, how will that affect our health? And how will our health affect our personal growth?

That’s why, when it comes to being productive for our personal growth, we want to make time for those areas of our life that contributes to our personal growth. Good sleep, exercise, and eating habits are going to have an impact on our health (obviously) and our health is going to have an impact on our personal growth.

At the end of the day, you have nothing to lose by prioritising your health and personal growth in your schedule. So before thinking that anything health related is not necessary to put on your schedule, remember how it contributes to your self-growth.

BEING Productive in general

Ultimately, these are the productivity tips for specific areas of your life.

There are a ton of productivity blog posts on this blog that you can read to improve your productivity in general.

When it comes to improving any area of your life, having good productivity is important, and that may have been something you have noticed reading this entire blog post.

At the end of the day, we want to make sure that we are making the most of our time, and that we are putting our time into the right places. Sometimes, when it comes to improving our productivity, it may be easier to focus on a particular area to improve our productivity on.

Regardless, I really hope that this blog post had helped you find ways to improve productivity in a certain area of your life. Just remember, to stay kind to yourself no matter what, and remember that while productivity is important, it’s not something to base your worth off…

-Lauren 😊

Share This Blog Post Here:

---

Related Articles:

Similar Articles You’ll Also Enjoy:

Click here for all the blog posts on productivity!!

Greatest Self-Care Actions for EVERY AREA of your LIFE

How to Invest in Yourself!

Time Management Tips

Organisation Tips

The Best Way to Set Goals!

---

---

CONNECT with ME!! 🗯

Instagram:

@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)

---

---