9 Productivity Hacks for Students and Working Professionals

Productivity is the measure of how much value you are generating from the work you are doing. We aim to increase productivity to get the best out of our effort. Following are 9 productivity hacks for students and working professionals, which were already known to many but have yet to be practised widely. If you can motivate your employees to adopt these, it will increase productivity of your employees.

It is not like I have discovered them, but those were available in different books. I have customized them per my requirement and applied them to my life. Based on my experience, I am sharing with you as I believe if you can practice the same with self-discipline, you can achieve a lot irrespective of whether you are a student, professional, or businessman.

Is it worth spending time on these productivity hacks for students and working professional?

What is your problem? What is stopping you from being productive?

Your problem is that you cannot do all your work well as you do not have enough time. If this is the problem, remember that everyone on this blue planet gets precisely 24 hours daily. Nature does not discriminate between you or anyone else based on caste, religion, social status, or nationality. Nature gives us the same 24 hours, which can be wasted, spent, or invested properly based on your best intention.

How could some people achieve so much while you cannot?

Some people live a fabulous life even after doing their work successfully while you are constantly overwhelmed. This is because these people are using these 24 hours judiciously, only on those tasks that have maximum consequences on their life.

How to solve this problem?

What percentage of your week you are spending on each of your critical tasks will you be able to answer? Many of you may be unable to list all the jobs you did on the last day within 1 minute. You have to think and may not even recall.

What are your critical tasks right now? You should know your important works like the palm of your hand. You should know where you are spending your most valuable resource – time.

To know this, it is crucial to record your time as you work on each task and to calculate the proportion or percentage based on total hours in a week, which is 24×7 = 168 hours

What percentage of your week you are spending on each of your critical tasks will you be able to answer? Many of you may be unable to list all the jobs you did on the last day within 1 minute. You have to think and may not even recall.

How to calculate the time spent on each of the tasks?

Sit in an isolated room and think about all your accomplished tasks in the last 7 days and list the names only. You might miss some of them, but those can be listed later. Now we have to start tracking the time spent on each activity.

Many of us have a habit of waiting for the perfect time to start something new. But you need not wait for any special day. Just start logging your time from 12 A.M. the next day even if it is the middle of the week. Log hours against each work you are going to do. You can use pen and paper, which would be tedious in this digital age.

I recommend using a spreadsheet or any free tool available in the market. These tools help you calculate based on your requirement and give you excellent analytics without much effort.

Step 2: Categorize the tasks where you spent your time

If you do the above work for around 3 weeks, you will have a fair volume of data to work on. Categorize each task into groups based on the intent of your work. The work can be directed towards your business, organization, social relationships or commitments, family, kids, fitness, and personal growth, including learning. Even a few jobs like sleeping or planning your day can be categorized as productivity boosters. There can be work like watching TV or social media or chatting with friends for hours without any definite purpose. These activities may not generate any value for you and can be considered unproductive.

Why is sleeping a productivity booster?

You cannot achieve productivity by working 24 hours a day. In real life, after a point of time, you will lose focus, and even though you keep on working, your productivity will have a diminishing effect. It would help if you did not let yourself burn out of energy, as it will not do any good. Adequate sleep will help you regain energy.

But remember the word ‘adequate’. Sleeping for 12 hours will not do any good as well. So based on your physical and mental activity, you should know how much sleep you need daily. It should ideally be between 6-8 hours. Sleeping less than 6 hours daily will make you fatigued and unable to deliver properly.

Step 3: Set your goals

Now you know your present problem very well. You also see how you spend your time and how much of your week is spent on which task. Now you have to decide where you want to go. Think and write down your goals in various areas of your life – like your family goal, career goal, health goal, financial goal, etc. Remember your goal must be measurable and time-bound, or else you will never be able to proceed with the subsequent steps.

Step 4: Break it down into tasks and subtasks

Once you have the goals listed down, find out the tasks you need to do to achieve those goals in the next few years, as applicable. These tasks must have a deadline aligned with the deadline of your goal. If a job is large enough not to be completed in one shot, I recommend splitting it into smaller but logical chunks called subtasks. It is easier to track till completion as smaller subtasks can be completed in one go.

Step 5: Categorize the tasks or subtasks

As you have already categorized your time log, similarly categorize the tasks and subtasks you have listed in Step 4, into relevant categories based on your purpose of doing them. Now you have two lists of categories: what you are actually doing and what you should do as per your goals.

Step 6: Map the actual work-based category with goal based category

Now you have the critical work. Map each category in the actual list with the goal list. You have to judiciously name them so that similar things are tagged under the correct category. This is a one-time critical task, and you have to spend time doing it properly, as it will drive the actual purpose of this exercise.

Step 7: Set weightage on each category

Look at the goal to which each of your categories is directed at. Set a weightage on a scale of 1 to 5 for each category. Your most essential goals tend towards 1; as importance diminishes, it moves towards 4, and unproductive works are tagged as 5.

Step 8: Allocate time for each category

Every week, each of us gets a brand new 168 hours. Now we have to allocate a percentage of this time to our various categories based on weightage.

Before you allocate your time, remember the following –

• Do not allocate daily, as your activities vary over weekdays, weekends, or holidays. So a weekly allocation will help you to track properly as your allocation will average out.
• Allocate at least 25% to 30% of the time for tasks that are productivity boosters. These are the tasks doing which properly, will help increase your productivity. This can include adequate sleep, planning your day or week, tracking your time, etc. These tasks do not have direct return but positively affect other tasks.
• Do not avoid allocating a small amount of time for unproductive work like checking social media or socializing with friends or neighbours. We are social animals, and we need some time for these activities. But it should be within a limit though definitely not zero. If you do not allocate time for these social activities, they will consume your productive time.
• Allocate more time towards your higher value categories as they have maximum consequences.

Step 9: Keep on recording your time every week

Now you have a target allocation. Keep using your tool to record your time and compare your actual weekly effort every weekend against your target. You have to make sure that your actual effort against each category matches as much as possible with the benchmark you have set. The more and more time you spend with your high-value tasks, the more productive you will be.

Time is your most valuable asset, which cannot be stored. It can be spent, wasted, or invested. Your future depends on how you use your time. So track your present use of time, check your goals and align your actual effort against your goals and keep on tracking every week to ensure more and more action goes towards your high-value tasks.

Good work needs proper preparation. Though the following activities will initially take your time, in the long run, it will give 10 times return provided you are consistent and follow every step in a disciplined manner. Let us discuss the different techniques of productivity improvement.

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