How to Get More Work Done In Less Time in 4 Proven Steps

Being online, there are so many distractions out there, that slow down our work. Especially, if you are a busy person, you need to have a strategy to get more work done in less time.

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It should be a combination of smart work and hard work. That includes delegating your work, making most out of your time, removing all distractions, and many more.

I have already shared some of the techniques which I use to stay productive.

There are hell lot of distractions online that will kill your precious time. Here I will share a few more tips, that I started using recently, and it’s helping me to make most out of my time.

After applying many of these tips, I could spend more time on other stuff, which I used to ignore earlier. I started setting priorities for work, maintain a To-do list, and many other small life hacks, which is helping me to stay more productive.

Life hacks to get more work done in less time

1. Don’t open Social Media/Email first thing in the morning

Whenever I look at my browsing habits, I realize I spend quite a time on Facebook, and Email is the first thing I check in the morning. Honestly, this is a bad approach from my end, and now I try to keep myself away from Facebook as much as I could.

For emails, I have dedicated time to checking and replying to Emails. It’s good that you should allocate dedicated time for email. What worked for me is; 30 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes in the evening. 

Facebook is one of the most addictive sites that’s killing most bloggers’ productive time, agree?

How can you make use of Facebook then?

First off, try to make Facebook work for you, not against you! Don’t let Facebook suck your precious time that can be spent on creating great content.

Never open Facebook or any other social media as the first thing in the morning. Your morning should be spent on the following:

  • Exercise: Running, Yoga, Gym or anything that make you sweat
  • Reading: Spend time learning a new thing or reading your unread material in the Pocket app or Feedly app.
  • Meditation: Even a 10-minute meditation can give you so much mental boost, it would nurture your day. You can use Wakingup app to start practicing meditation. Read about meditation benefits here.
  • Visualization: Visualizing your day in advance, will help you to stay in your A-game. It is one powerful technique used by leaders of the world. Something, you can integrate into your day to day activity.
  • Gratitude: This will help you stay positive, thankful, and grounded to your best self. You can use the “5-minute journal” available as a mobile app or you can even order a physical copy

For further reading:

2. Use the Pomodoro technique

Pomodoro is a technique that can help to get more things done in less time. You’ll be more productive when you follow Pomodoro tool. Here’s the summary of Pomodoro technique

  • Set the timer for 35 mins
  • Focus on ONE task
  • Finish at least 7-8  Pomodoro per day
  • You can download Pomodoro timer here.
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The key factor in making Pomodoro work for you is, don’t give up. It might be difficult to use in the beginning, but you’ll work faster, better, and productive after using Pomodoro for several times.

3. Learn to write faster

Writing faster yet better blog posts always be an asset for any blogger. If you want to be a productive blogger, then you must be learning how to write faster blog posts.

Because, you’ll be spending more time creating content on your blog to make it a success, right?

So, there’s no excuse if you can’t produce great blog posts in less time. Writing faster blog posts is not a skill, but it becomes easy when you have a habit of writing daily – that’s the only secret.

Here are two more ways to write faster blog posts almost every time.

  • Use a distraction-free writing tool:  There are many distraction-free writing tools that you can use for writing. I use Google docs and sometimes write in WordPress (It has an in-built distraction-free writing mode) It comes with a pleasant background and soothing music, creates a great environment for you to write without having any distractions or noise. 
  • Don’t edit while writing: This is another tip that will make you write faster blog posts every time. Most bloggers often edit their content to make their posts perfect. I’m not suggesting you don’t edit at all, but make sure you’re focusing on WRITING part first.

Editing and proof-reading can be done later, once you finish writing your blog posts, you can go ahead with the editing part. This way you’ve two benefits, one is, you’ll be writing without any distractions of editing, other is, you’ll be spending time ONLY on editing part once you finished writing the post!

4. Make sure your working space is clean and uncluttered

decluttered home office space
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The working place matters a lot if you’re working from home. You must keep your working desk clean and uncluttered, follow some basic ethics like not bringing snacks on your table, etc.

The more simple your working space is, the more productive you become, it’s as simple as that. If you want to make most of your working space, invest some money in bringing a better table where you can sit without any troubles, make sure your ergonomics is perfect while spending your time on the computer.

4. Create to-do lists each day before you sleep

Todo lists work fantastic if you want to spend productive time online. Because, to-do lists give you clear directions on what to do on a particular day, so your mind always keeps alarming you about your todo lists.

I use ToDoist, which is one of the best cross-platform to-do managers.  It syncs all the data and helps me manage my work in a much better way.

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How can you create better to-do lists?

Though I use the app, one can always start with a pen and paper. Think on paper. Before creating your to-do lists, write what you want to achieve in a paper. This way there will be no disturbance for you to create and organize your to-do lists. Make sure you’re not putting so many tasks on your to-do lists.

The lesser tasks on your to-do lists, the better you can achieve them all. Limit your to-do lists to 3 to 4 most important tasks. And start working on them one after the other, begin with your most important task in the hand. This way you’ll be able to do more things in less time.

These are some of the many tips that I follow, and it helps me to get more work done in lesser time. I know being online, it’s hard to stay away from multitasking, but if you are serious about your work, and believe in “Time is money“, you should stop multi-tasking.

It may be a little difficult for you to adjust at one go, but with practice, it will be very helpful.

Another thing which I started doing recently is, I stopped working in the night-time. I get up at 7-8 in the morning and sleep by 11. This helped me a lot to maintain a perfect balance between my personal and social life.

Moreover, I don’t feel like an alien, when working at strange hours. Selecting your idle sleeping time is your call, but if you want to save your time and health at the same time, it’s a good idea to start bringing change from today. I also recommend start practicing Yoga and meditation, as it helps you have more energy throughout the day. I talked about this earlier “How to transform your life today“.

Go ahead, try a few of the above tips and let me know if it helped you to become a better person and a blogger or not. If you find this article useful, do consider sharing.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

11 thoughts on “How to Get More Work Done In Less Time in 4 Proven Steps”

  1. Ahmer Faraz

    Hi Harsh

    Great tips to increase productivity. I am learning a lot for your blog. Everyday I read many articles from your blog and save important points from them.

    My Chrome bookmarks are filled with you blogs articles, saved category wise. 🙂

    I also don’t like Facebook because I wastes a lot of time in useless things. Twitter I think is the best social site we have today. Facebook can also be used for good purposes if someone wants to do so.

    Your tips like Zenwriter, Pomodoro are new for me and I will try to use them.

    Thanks for your clean and precise writing.

    I am also learning writing style from your blog posts and trying to implement them in my blog.

  2. Roger Minh

    Thanks for your post.I can’t stop opening Facebook every morning.

  3. Edson Hale

    This is the key problem of every second blogger that in instead of becoming a good time manager he tries to become a time exploiter and in this effort fail to utilize it productively

  4. Rajkumar Jonnala

    well this is a good way to complete a task without getting distracted for bloggers!! most of the people forgets their task when they use to find something interesting… thanks for sharing these tips….

  5. Alok Krishali

    sir you have explain here in a nice manner. But i want to ask you that how are the essential thing which i kept in my mind while writing a post. I have recently start my blog and don’t have enough knowledge about blogging. Please tell me the important thing that are benificial to my blog in favor of traffic..

  6. Aman Arora

    According to me facebook makes you really unproductive, its like a trap, once you go in its very difficult to come out hehe 😛 also creating to-do lists have helped me to be more productive always 🙂

  7. Shanker Bakshi

    A good read again, well as you said, there are so many destructions on the net out there that suck up your time and actually when you realise it, it’s already too late to wings your creation. I agree if you can avoid being on facebook and busy reading those “Jackie Chan and rajnikant” jokes can saves you lot of time. Time and post scheduling will definitely helps.

    For writing ( un -distractive and neat like a vodka) I use Windows Live writer. It gives you post your article even not visiting any your own site. ( I guess that too offensive for a blogger) but sometime one need sour medicine that cures and get back you to the normal.

    The only reason which i consider for the big success of this blog is posting regularity and that comes when you keep yourself away from all other “mind blowing” thoughts and ventures.

  8. Istiak Rayhan

    Hey Harsh,
    Great Post as usual.
    We waste times online by surfing one page to other. It happens with me a lot. I spend 5-6 hours in front of my computer. And at the end of the day I realize I did only few things.
    I going to use to do list and pomodro tool get more work done within less time.
    Thanks for this nice post. Keep it up.

  9. Varun Pandula

    The first point “Don’t open Facebook/Email first thing in the morning” that is what i plan to do every morning but end up opening it and wasting precious time 🙁
    Thanx for this eye opener 🙂

  10. Vishnu Aniyan

    Thanks for sharing these great tips with us Harsh,
    Let me share one of the way I follow to be more protective (Eespecially for blogging) –
    First I have created a Private Google Form in which I have added Tasks ,duration and if the goal is archived or not, And always try to fill it before any thing else. It was very hard in the beginning But it Helped! I was able to do blogging more productively. Plus when i see all My Tasks History in the Google Drive Spreadsheet it act as an appreciation for me 🙂
    Do try it out

  11. Bibin varghese

    When ever i open my laptop for blogging, i use to go for facebook and then youtube. Spend min. 2 hours on it. .
    Sometimes i forgot to do blogging
    this fb is so addictive

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