Get shit done now – Productivity tips 101

   b) Identify your most productive time and recognize your natural sleep cycle:-  There must be some time of your day while you feel most energetic. Identify and use those hours to accomplish. And if possible, stick to your natural body clock, but that way, you have a sound sleep, and naturally, you will feel refreshed after waking up.

c) Thorough medical checkup:- Sometimes, your body may be giving you signs and screaming for help, and you are brushing it off by blaming your laziness. Some nutrients deficiency can make you sluggish, lazy, and unproductive. The most common ones are iron, Vitamin B12, iodine, and Vitamin D deficiency, which play a major role in daily life.

d) Mental health issues:- 

1. Do not succumb to toxic hustle culture:- your priority should be what you are doing and not how much others are doing.
2. Never overwork or exhaust yourself and try not to overthink:-  success should not come at the cost of your well-being.
3. For Learning Disabilities and attention deficit disorders:- 

1. If you are undiagnosed and think that there is some probability that you have this disorder, try seeking professional help and therapy, it doesn’t make you less talented or less worthy.
2. Remember, you need not be productive as per societal norms. Focus on your assets like intelligence.
3. Mindfulness meditation is found to help in these cases.

Note:- These are very general and basic advice. Please seek professional help whenever needed.

1. For Depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues:- Things can be hard while dealing with these things. Meditation, exercise regular dose of sunlight can help. Reach out to professionals and therapists and let not toxic hustle culture demotivate you.
2. Take time to destress and relax.
3. Remind yourself the reason why you started to motivate yourself.

 GOAL SETTING to get shit done: 

• This is very crucial because if it’s not done properly, it can ruin our whole mood or we end up using our time in doing unnecessary things which doesn’t serve the purpose of productivity.
• Make a to-do list
• Group the similar agendas together:- we can easily complete similar task in one flow and no need change the mindset.

Learn to prioritise tasks in your to-do list based on importance and urgency:-  This helps when you have lot to do and you don’t know where to began.

If you have less task on your list you can prioritise by putting numbers.

1. Tackle the most prioritized task at the peak of your energy. That is when you are starting out. Or else you may not have enough energy left to complete the hardest task, and you will lag.
2. Understand how things work for you:- Do you have trouble retaining focusing on a particular task for a long time but very quick to get in the zone? Shuffling the different tasks can be an option for you. But if you take time to focus but could retain it for a considerable amount of time, try to sit with one job and get shit done before moving into another. This way you can well use your time. Productivity isn’t how many get done but how much.
3. Understand and accept your limitations:- Always remember your constraints while planning. Keeping an unrealistic number of tasks can make you demotivated, and this serves no good.
4. It’s ok not to finish everything:- Some times it is ok not to get shit done, That is why we have tomorrow. Don’t get discouraged if you have any work untouched. We can’t always correctly estimate your capabilities. So please don’t treat it as a failure. 

So, now you have tips on how to take care of yourself and set prioritized and achievable goals. Creating a beautiful schedule can give you a sense of accomplishment, but you still have nothing done. Then, you sit down to work. Then, a big problem arises- PROCRASTINATION.

Why do we even procrastinate?

Many think of it as a bad habit of putting tasks until the last moment, poor time management, or simply laziness when referring to procrastination. But, do we put away tasks just because of laziness when we had to do it anyway eventually? In some cases, procrastination might be a sign of some underlying psychological disorder. For example, it might be a maladaptive coping mechanism for someone with an underlying stressor.

The few common reasons for procrastination are:

• Perfectionism: Several studies have linked perfectionism with procrastination. Perfectionist individuals are so focused on the outcome that they delay starting. They don’t want to start without a concrete plan which would deliver the perfect result. They keep on revising how to approach the task at hand rather than doing the job itself.
• Maladaptive daydreaming: If you often find yourself procrastinating by daydreaming about abstract realities, you may suffer from maladaptive daydreaming.Thats due to underlying trauma which needs to be addressed.
• Lack of energy: You may often find yourself not having the energy to do the task, which leads your future self to bear the burden. This might be a symptom of an underlying medical disease that may lack vitamins and minerals or Depression. 
• Unrealistic Goals: When it is advised to reach for the stars, goals which are too unrealistic are often daunting. People are more likely to procrastinate if their goals seem unreachable compared to when their goals seem reachable. If goals seem unreachable, people often develop the mindset of ‘why try if there’s no point.’
• Feeling overwhelmed: Sometimes, you may procrastinate if you feel overwhelmed by the task at hand. It may be a single huge task or multiple tasks that need to be done.

Time to tackle procrastination-

 TIPS AND TECHNIQUES to get shit done :-

1.  5-minute rule: If you think perfectionism might be the cause for your procrastination, try the 5-minute rule. As the name suggests, it takes the task at hand and starts working on it for just 5 minutes. Don’t think how it’ll turn out to be. Just focus on doing it for 5 minutes. You may find yourself entering a state of flow after you cross the biggest hurdle, which is starting.
2. Making habits: You may struggle with motivation which is common since motivation doesn’t last long, but habits do! Try to make a habit of sitting at your work desk at a specific time every day, like brushing your teeth.
3. Make a schedule: To get shit done, Make a schedule for the day the night before and get a head start so that you won’t waste time thinking when to do what and eventually procrastinate by planning and not doing the job. If it helps, schedule your day by each hour to know how much time you have at hand.
4. Don’t multitask: Multitasking has been proven multiple times to not being effective. Learn to prioritize a task and focus on it. If you try to do more than one task, you’ll find none to be done efficiently.
5. Minimize distraction: Its hard to focus if your mind gets distracted every few seconds. If it’s your notifications, put your phone on airplane mode. If it’s outside noise, make sure to sit where there is no noise.
6. Reduce dopamine overdose: Consuming too much all the time may make you lose work motivation. Avoid checking your phone first thing in the morning to not lose your work ethic for the rest of the day.
7. Pomodoro: Traditionally, the Pomodoro technique is 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest. If this style doesn’t fit your attention style, you can always design it to fit you. In place of 25 minutes of work, you can do 90 minutes of work and have 15 minutes of break. This is to emphasize taking breaks and not just continuously work for hours.
8. Declutter: Take time to declutter your life. Stress and workload may make you feel overwhelmed. Decluttering helps a lot in organizing where you eliminate things you don’t need. Start by cleaning up your desk or deleting junk emails. Our brain is like our computer memory. The cleaner it is, the faster it performs.
9. Change places: If you feel stuck, try changing your workplace by moving your laptop to a room with a window or going to a library for a change in scenery.
10. Learn to say NO: Anything that doesn’t serve the purpose, say no to it. There is no point in wasting time on things that don’t benefit you. You don’t have to go out with your friends or watch that movie when you have a task at hand.
11. Be mindful: If you aren’t mindful, you may find time to slip through your hands like grains of sand. Being mindful helps you understand how many hours you are working and how much time will waste. To do that, you may set alarms to remind you not to spend too much time in your break.
12. Review your week: At the end of every week, reflect on the week. How much have you been productive or which habit worked and which didn’t. This will help you in formulating better plans the next time since you’ll be knowing what worked for you and what didn’t.

CONCLUSION:-

This articles are called self-help for a reason. It is just for guidance to get shit done, it’s you who will have to do it for yourself, and you are one hundred percent capable of doing it. Tomorrow never comes. Start today. One day you will thank your younger version for just starting. All the best.