HOW TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE

At work, it’s easy to lose motivation, become uninspired and generally drift off task. By making my workspace comfortable and creating a work ‘zone’, I feel a lot more confident in my tasks and my work in general. My work desk is where I spend 37-45 hours a week, sitting, working and eating. I’m still quite new to my full-time job but I have slowly learned that personalising my desk in a neat and organised way makes me work a bit better. An empty desk makes me think of high school, university and exams, who wants to be reminded of that? 

1. Use a To-do List or a Calendar

I always hand wrote my to-do lists, and sometimes I still do when I have a few tasks to do at home. For work and my blog, I use the app Todolist. I create categories like Work, Personal, Blog, Appointments, Parcels to arrive and Shopping List. Within those categories, I might make headings and drop down lists within them. The thing I love about this app is that I can see the tasks crossed off! That’s honestly the best part. I sync it with my iPhone so I can access it whenever I need, adding or checking off tasks. 

I can set goals within the app to get a certain amount of tasks completed each day, and by completing tasks I earn ‘karma’ points. I’m not quite sure what they’re for, but they sound good!

I used to use a physical day planner diary, and it was amazing! I loved using it and always found it was reliable. Now I’m working on my computer so much more - I just use the calendar. I’ve always been a pen and paper kind of person, but it’s just too time-consuming for a physical diary now (even though I miss it).  If you’re still up for paper and pen, I loved using my Moleskine diary and I’ve heard that bullet journals are great too! 

Another To-do list program I use at work is Asana. This is where I keep ALL my tasks and ideas at work. It’s something my boss introduced to me at work and I’m definitely not the best at using it and keeping it up to date - but I try! It’s really great for working on different projects with a number of people. 

2. Declutter your workspace!

This is something I feel like we’re all bad at. One afternoon I went through everything I had on my desk, everything in my drawers and everything that was piled up. I categorised things into ‘yep I look at this every week’ or ‘nope I haven’t looked at that in 3 years’. I either found a place for it, or I threw it away. That included all of my uni work and even some of my grade 12 work and I graduated almost a year ago now!

Decluttering at the end of your day or week is always great! You don’t want to add anything extra to your to-do list, and you definitely don’t want to distract yourself from the to-do list either! Clutter feels heavy on my mind and it cramps my workspace, working feels so much easier when I don’t have to think about all the junk sitting around me!

3. Minimal storage (As organised as you can!)

In the office, I recently got a set of drawers (yay!). They’re great for holding the things I would normally bring in my bag every day or sit on my desk. The filing drawer is used for important pieces of paper that I need to look at physically at some point. I hate hoarding paper but sometimes we just have to! 

Keeping paper to a minimum and just having an organised filing system on your computer can be so much easier. Normally once every two weeks I dedicate some time to organising my files, removing screenshots, renaming files so they’re easily searchable and putting files in the right places. It’s always so much more convenient to find ‘City Coffee in June’ rather than ‘IMG_8807’.

At my desk at home, I have an in-tray for invites, notes from brands that come with parcels etc. It’s all kept in one place so nothing can disappear!

4. Make friends with plants

I always feel like plants make a room feel fresher, less closed in and just generally more aesthetically pleasing.I still need a plant in the office at work! At home, I have a few small plants on my desk - mostly succulents. They require almost no attention and they always look so sweet! Next time I go plant shopping I will probably be looking at Devils Ivy, String of Hearts and Fishbone Cacuts. 

All images via Pinterest, view all pins on my Pinterest boards here: https://au.pinterest.com/izzywears/