10 Actual Ways to Live a More Productive Life

Because do we have time to waste?

This is the moment where you’re probably going to roll your eyes, because you’ve probably seen countless of blog posts before on how to be more productive.

But there must be a reason why you ended up on this blog post… is it because you still are looking for ways to be more productive?

Okay, I’m not here to explain why you should read my blog post, and why it’s different to the others. What I will say here is that it’s going to be all about taking action and applying every single step.

This blog post is going to contain 10 actual ways to live a more productive life. I know that many of these tips may not be something you’ve heard before. This is because they had came from three different books that I put a productivity spin to.

These books include The Woman Code (by Sophia Nelson), Girl, Wash Your Face (by Rachel Hollis), and The 5 Second Rule (by Mel Robbins). These books don’t focus on productivity, but the concepts they included on there were able to be turned into a productivity spin.

So keep reading to see these tips, and most importantly the action steps. We’re all about applying what you learn, and letting that be as simple as possible.

1 – Know Your Values

I know, it seems a bit odd to see “know your values” as a productivity tip. But hear me out.

Knowing your values, specifically your core values is actually an important first step to a more productive life.

Think about this, is spending your days and your weeks doing something that is not aligned with your core values productive?

The answer is no. In fact, spending your time doing things that don’t align with your values and what you truly care about is a waste of time.

That’s why, to be truly productive, is to do things that align with your values (and this isn’t just work related stuff!)

For example, you may say that your family is one of your values, but your schedule is filled up with other commitments where family time is no where to be found.

Or, you may say that self-care is one of your values, but self-care is no where to be found in your schedule.

Maybe one of your core values is personal growth, but you don’t schedule in personal growth in your weekly schedule.

So that’s why, you need to immediately identify your core values. You need to identify what’s truly important to you. Without it, we’ll just be spending our days doing things that don’t actually contribute to us.

Action Step: List down your core values right now. Then, when you develop your schedule for the day or week, see if the things you added on there align with your values.

2 – Prioritize Quickly

Okay, we just went into a very obvious tip that you’ve seen in many productivity videos or blog posts before.

But this is a perfect tip that follows our first one.

Once we have our core values, it’s very important to prioritize them.

Because what happens if we don’t prioritize? Everything will be all over the place.

That’s why, not only do we have to know what our values are, we need to now prioritize them.

We can prioritize them by simply listing in order the importance of it. For example, someone’s core values could be health, impact, personal growth, faith, and family. It will go in the following order:

1. Faith
2. Family
3. Health
4. Personal growth
5. Impact

Then, once it’s all in order, when we do our schedule, it’s easier for us to identify which events or tasks related to those values go on our schedule first. It’s a good reference to use when conducting our schedule.

Action Step: Take the values that you had written down in “Know Your Values” and just order them by priority. Then, you can use this when looking at your schedule, and see if your schedule aligns with your values and your priorities.

3 – Be Flexible

Continuing on, let’s assume that you had created your schedule for the day or the week.

Here’s something really important to carry throughout the week – Be flexible.

Let’s face it, things in life happen. Things unexpectedly occur, we get emergencies that we need to attend to… things happen that drift our schedule away every once in a while.

That’s why it’s important to be really good at being flexible with our time.

So how does this even help us live a more productive life?

Well, imagine that we have our schedule. Looking at it, it aligns with our core values and priorities, and we feel happy that we’re set for a productive week. But then, something comes up that was beyond our control (a family emergency), and then all of a sudden things in our schedule fall apart. We stress about how everything is now messed up in our schedule. We feel guilty about how we fell behind on the things we planned to do. Then throughout the week, we spend the time making up for the lost time….

By picturing that scenario, you can notice how we became unproductive just because of ONE thing that occurred in the week that changed our schedule a bit. We spent so much time stressing about how that ONE event messed up our entire schedule, and spent the week trying to make up for it.

But what did we end up doing? We ended up compromising our productivity on the rest of the events/tasks that week, just by trying to make up for that ONE emergency that changed our schedule.

That’s why it’s important to be flexible! We can have all the things perfectly planned out, but it still doesn’t guarantee the things that will unexpectedly come our way. Let’s picture the same scenario, but this time being flexible.

Let’s say that we have our productive schedule ready to go, that is aligned with our values and priorities. Then, something unexpectedly comes up (family emergency). Because we are flexible, we attend to that family emergency as soon as possible, and stay for as long as needed. When we return home that night, all we do we move around our schedule for the next days. We adjust the schedule by moving around the things that are of higher priority, and then the things that were missed out, we just leave them at the end of the week, or for next week… NO stress!

As you can see, instead of feeling stressed out about our schedule being delayed, it’s much more productive to just be flexible. Being flexible is going to help us adjust and adjust as many times as needed, and still do the things that we need to do.

Action Step: Starting right now, remind yourself that no matter what happens to you (and your schedule), you’re just going to be flexible. You’re not going to stress out about one little change, or having to adjust your schedule a bit. You’re just going to be flexible.

4 – Managing Distractions

So now that we’ve got our values, know our priorities, and can be more flexible, the next important step is to manage our distractions.

This continues on from being flexible. Sometimes, there are things that come along the way that are beyond our control, and we absolutely have to attend to. But what about the things that we don’t need to attend to? What about the things that are just distractions? This is where managing distractions come in.

Managing distractions is really important. It’s quite obvious… if we are distracted, it’s hard to get things done.

We already know that our phones, texting, social media, and answering emails are a distraction.

We already know that every notification that pops up is going to be a distraction.

We know that the moment that we are distracted by any of those things, we’re going to drift away from our schedule, and it’s going to be hard to remain focus. But here are some steps that we can do to manage those distractions…

Action Steps:

The first step is that WE need to know what our distractions are. Remember the action step for Know Your Values? You’re going to do the same thing, except you’re going to be listing your distractions instead. List everything big or small that tends to distract you on a daily basis.

Then, the second step is to remove the distractions. This is quite obvious as well. If the temptation is close by, it’s going to be hard to stay focused. We can remove the distractions by silencing or turning off our phones, removing the social media apps from our phones (for now), and turn off notifications for our emails. Whatever the temptation is, we want it out of sight.

Finally, the third step is to actually use the list that you created from the first step, and turn it into a Not-To-Do List. I definitely recommend that you read my blog post on how to create a Not-To-Do List to get the expansion of the full steps. In short, a not-to-do list is just like a to-do list except you tick off the things that you didn’t do that day.

This is a great tool because for some reason, we love the feeling of ticking things off. By having a not-to-do list, we use that feeling to our advantage. Because we want to tick things off, we don’t do the things.

So again, I definitely recommend you read the blog post on how to create a not-to-do list so you can actually get a whole expansion of steps.

5 – Own Your Mornings with a Morning Routine

Here’s the truth about why you should have a morning routine…

Your morning sets up your day. Hence, a good morning sets you up for a good day, and a bad morning is going to set you up for a bad day. Sounds harsh and simple, I know.

Yes, things may go beyond our control in a good day that turns it into a bad day, and just because it’s a bad morning, doesn’t mean the entire day is going to be bad. BUT regardless on how the rest of the day goes, you want to have a good morning routine.

You want to have a good morning routine to set up your mindset and your headspace, so that when you go to work, school, or anything else, you feel good about yourself and the day ahead.

I definitely recommend that you read my blog post on how to ruin your morning routine. It will give you the ways on how you can ruin your morning routine. Sometimes, what matters more is what NOT to do, then what you should do.

Plus, one of the essential routines to personal growth is actually your morning routine, and there’s an expansion on how to do a morning routine on there as well!

Action Step:

In summary, when it comes to developing a morning routine, the most important thing to remember is that it’s a morning routine that suits YOU.

There is no one size fits all morning routine. You don’t need to completely copy a morning routine that you watched on a YouTube video. You can just pick and choose what you think works best for you, in terms of getting you in a good headspace and mindset in the morning. Then, you just make sure that you simplify the steps, meaning that you don’t add too many things on your morning routine.

This is because your mornings are not supposed to have a lot of chaos. When you have a lot of steps in your morning routine, it’s going to feel like more chaos.

6 – Have Daily Routines

Okay, now we’re talking about routines in general.

Having routines are great for both our values and our priorities.

First of all, routines are full of habits. Since habits are automatic, you find yourself doing them without even thinking about it. So when you formulate a routine with habits, it becomes automatic.

And when those are good habits, they are so much more beneficial. The best part about routines is its automation… you don’t have to think about it!

It’s so important to master different routines because honestly, we can’t rely solely on motivation. Motivation comes and goes, if we were to rely solely on motivation, then it means that we’re only going to do things once in a while. And we already know that to achieve anything we can’t just show up once in a while. We need to show up consistently.

So that’s why we need routines. Since we can’t fall back to motivation, we can fall back to our routines.

The different types of routines you can have during your day is obviously your morning routine, along with your night routine, exercise routine, study routine, work, routine, and even your self-care routine!

Action Steps:

If you don’t have routines already set in place, this is the time so start formulating them.

Here are some simple steps to developing any routine:

1. Decide on a routine (obviously!)
2. List down the tasks that you need to do for that routine (you can brainstorm through YouTube or Pinterest as long as they’re tasks that are suited for YOU!)
3. Simplify the number of steps – a really important step because you don’t want to have too many steps in your routine, and you don’t want to overcomplicate it.

7 – Procrastinate (the right way!)

I know, this sounds like an odd tip for living a productive life.

But, it’s probably because you’re thinking of the procrastination being ‘one more episode’ or ‘just five more minutes on social media‘.

In reality, procrastination can be a variety of things. Procrastination is also when we choose to check emails over doing an important project. It’s also when we decide to clean our room, instead of working on our assignment. Those tasks that we chose to work on are not necessarily unimportant, but compared to our bigger projects it is.

We don’t want to fall in the trap where we start the day off doing the small tasks on our to-do list for the sake of ticking things off. Because what ends up happening is that we used up our most productive energy on small tasks, that we run out of it for our more important tasks later on in the day.

That’s why, this way is all about procrastinating the right way.

This procrastination is called creative procrastination.

Because believe it or not, every single person procrastinates. What matters is if they’re procrastinating the right way.

How we can procrastinate correctly is that we procrastinate the lower value tasks to work on the harder value tasks.

Let’s go back to the emails over work project example. Emails are the low value task and the work project is the high value task. So, when we are creatively procrastinating, we are procrastinating the emails to work on the work project.

Even though checking your emails, cleaning your room, or doing your chores are not unimportant, they can become a distraction to your more important tasks. That’s why it’s best to procrastinate them.

Action Step:

First, my blog post on how to procrastinate the right way has more expansion of these tips, so definitely read it! Here are the brief summarised steps:

1. Keep note of the activities that you currently do and evaluate how they contribute to your goals and priorities.
2. Keep a to-do list BUT mark down which tasks you should work on first and which tasks to procrastinate on.
3. Ask yourself this question if needed – is this making me productive, or tricking my mind into thinking I’m being productive?

8 – What Would Future You Do?

Let’s be clear – the ‘future you’ we’re referring to here is the person that you want to become.

This can be a very good way to have a more productive life.

That’s because it can help us make decisions related to our productivity with the long-term rather than the short-term and in the moment.

There may be times when we really don’t feel like doing what we need to do and just watch TV or go on social media instead.

But during times when you feel like doing anything, that’s when Future You comes into play. You start thinking about what the future you would do. You start thinking about what Future You would do in the exact position you are now.

‘Would Future Me stay accountable to myself and do the things that I say I’m going to do, or just slack off?’

‘Would Future Me listen to what other people say about me, or ignore them?’

‘Would Future Me get this done, or procrastinate it?’

I guess that’s why many people have vision boards. It’s because they help you envision your future self. Then, when things are not the best, you look at your vision board to remind you what you’re working towards.

When it comes to productivity, since we want to spend our time working on things that are important to us, this is a very important strategy. Most likely, the things that are important to us relate to our future self. So constantly asking ourselves what our Future Self would do can help us work on the right things in the present.

Action Step: During moments when you feel like you don’t want to do anything, ask yourself, what would future me do? Asking that question will help you make decisions related to productivity more long-term than short-term/in the moment feelings.

9 – 5 Second Rule

I recently read a book called the 5 Second Rule and it honestly had one main concept that changed my life…. especially with my productivity.

Because, here’s a fun fact about procrastination.

Most times, it’s not the task itself that is hard, it’s starting the task.

I mean, how many times did we put off doing certain chores even though it will only take 5 minutes of time… we actually procrastinated a 5 min task for two hours? (that’s me!!)

This is where Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule comes in.

The most simple way to explain this rule is that the moment you find yourself not wanting to do something, or procrastinating starting, you use the Rule 5-4-3-2-1 and then push yourself to get started.

Honestly, this is so simple but so effective. It had prevented many hours of procrastination from my experience, and it helps starting things a lot easier… especially with the tasks that I don’t want to do.

And you all have to do is countdown from five. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about counting down that scares us a little bit that we are pushed to do it once it blasts one.

It makes things easier to get going, and helps us beat all our excuses and lack of motivation.

Action Step: First, Mel Robbins’ book the 5 Second Rule is definitely one of my recommendations! I absolutely love that book.

Then, whenever you feel like you don’t want to do something… even just a small moment, use the rule. Countdown 5-4-3-2-1 and then get going! The hardest part is starting. Once we start, doing the task in itself becomes easier.

10 – Productivity Tools

Finally, last but not least, we’re going to talk about actual productivity tools to use to help us live a more productive life.

The reason why this wasn’t mentioned earlier is because it’s actually the last thing that we need to think of.

You see, when it comes to having a more productive life, it’s not all about having the best productivity apps downloaded, or using the best productivity platforms. It’s more about taking action, making changes, and lots of reflecting! We have to take care of those first, before we start thinking about what productivity tools to use.

Just like how a doctor won’t’ prescribe medicine until he actually analyses what you need, what changes you need to make, and does tests if needed. It’s the same with productivity and the productivity tools.

Hence, that’s why we mentioned to know your values, priorities, develop the skills of flexibility and managing distractions, and also formulating routines and different other strategies.

Now enough with that, here are some productivity tools that have helped me (these are not sponsored in any way!). And I’m sorry that I don’t have a whole list of tools here to recommend because here’s the truth – I only use two main tools for productivity.

I used to have many productivity apps, but when I reflected on the ones that I actually use, these are the ones:

Google Calendar – this is my number one tool for all things scheduling and adding reminders. I add everything I need to do on here. I do my calendar blocking and I set reminders on here as well. It’s a great tool because how you can use it on multiple devices, and check in on multiple devices.

Notion – this is another one of my favourite tools. I have everything organised on here. From my to-do lists with my blog, YouTube, studies, work, even for my workouts! All my content ideas are on here. There’s so much on here, and the best part that it’s easy to organise it.

As you can see, I only really use two productivity applications. This is because I don’t rely just on apps to improve my productivity. All the things that I mentioned earlier, I work on improving those, and that’s where most of my focus goes.

Action Step: If you haven’t got those tools yet, give it a go. Just remember that those are the things that had worked for me. There are many productivity apps out there that you can use, you just have to experiment which ones work best for you. It may take time, but eventually you’ll find the app that works for you.

Just remember to not rely solely on the apps to increase your productivity. Work on all the other things mentioned, and just use the apps as a tool to support it.

We’re being productive to make the most of our time

One misconception of productivity that I had to overcome was that being productive was actually about making the most of our time, rather than having more time.

I mean, obviously every single person has 24 hours in the day, we can’t have more time. But what we can do is make the most of our time. We make the most of our time, by actually spending it on things that really matter.

The last thing we want to do is spend all our time doing things that don’t align with our values, priorities, or our passions. That’s why we went over all of these tips so that you can think about how you really want to spend your time.

Hopefully this blog post, and the action steps helped you take a step (even just a small step) further into better productivity. Having a “more productive life” doesn’t require perfection, it requires progression!

-Lauren 😊

Book(s) this post was inspired by:

(not sponsored in any way!)

• The Woman’s Code – Sophia Nelson
• Girl, Wash Your Face – Rachel Hollis
• The 5 Second Rule – Mel Robbins

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