5 Healthy Habits To Be More Productive: Part 02
People are always on the hunt for tips to be more productive. How do I know? Because I can see what things people search on google that leads them to my website, lol. The power of SEO, ya know?
Last week, I shared 5 healthy habits to help you be more peacefully productive and today I’m gonna share 5 more tips with you. And here’s the thing – I have no shortage of productivity tips for people. Like my cup runneth over! But as I was brainstorming for these 2 posts, I made sure to pick out the best of the best. Habits that I have seen make a legit difference in my life when I am consistent with them. So yes, these are habits that I have weaved into my life over the last few years.
Emphasis on that last part – over the last few years. Before we start on the habits, I want to encourage you that these habits are not an all-or-nothing vibe.
Don’t feel pressure to do ALL 10 of these right now if they’re all new to you. Choose 1-2 and focus on implementing those into your life in a sustainable way. When things are sustainable, then we are consistent. When we are consistent, real change happens. Hustling Sanely is less about making big overwhelming life overhauls and more about honoring the season you’re in and making small adjustments often to support yourself in being the woman you want to be on a daily basis, ya know?
That being said, let’s quickly recap the first 5 habits that I shared last week before jumping into the new ones.
The first 5 tips to help you be more peacefully productive are:
01. Having regular check-in meetings
02. Taking a mid-day break to reset
03. Using Hustle Sanely 5 every day
04. Building rest into your schedule
05. Journaling in the morning and at night
Again, to dive deep into each of these, go back to podcast episode 146 from last week! Now let’s get into tips 6-10 to help you be more peacefully productive, shall we?
06. Celebrating small wins
Okay hear me out, I know some people will hear this one and shrug it off because it’s more “froo-froo” and less tactile. But, like I told you earlier, I’m only sharing habits that have actually helped me be more productive and so I had to include this one!
I used to be a “destination-focused” kinda gal.
I would put my blinders on and run full throttle toward my goals without paying attention to what my life looked and felt like on the way there. Enter- burnout, overwhelm, crappy mental health, and shallow relationships in my life. When I started to put less emphasis on the goal destination and more emphasis on my journey on the way to the goal, things shifted for me. So how can you focus on the journey more? By celebrating small wins along the way! Doing this keeps your tank full so you can continue moving forward toward the goal without crashing and burning or running on E.
07. Having “quiet time” built into your days
One of the biggest hindrances I used to struggle with when I was trying to get stuff done and be productive was limiting beliefs swirling around in my mind. And usually, those limiting beliefs had to do with comparing how much I’m doing to how much someone else was doing. And how did I know how much so and so was accomplishing? By consuming his or her content online.
Listen, I am all about consuming good-quality content. I love reading, I love listening to podcasts, I love watching Instagram stories and YouTube videos, but I’ve got to have boundaries around that stuff for the sake of my mental health. I’ve learned that when I am overconsuming content (even good content) I’m cluttering my mind. So my solution to this is to have quiet time built into my days.
For me, it’s when I shower. When I shower, I don’t consume any content. Instead, I let my mind decompress in the quiet. I used to watch YouTube videos in the shower but now, I just chill. Maybe for you, this looks like having quiet drives to or from work. Or maybe you don’t listen to anything while you go on a walk in the mornings. Just pick something that you do every day and make it your designated quiet time Not consuming something all the time has created brain space for me and when I have a less cluttered brain, I can be more peacefully productive!
08. Batching your weeks and time blocking your days
You wanna talk about tactical time management strategies – here we freaking go! These are my 2 top tier tools to help me stay focused on what matters, not be pulled around by distractions, and make real progress on my goals week after week. I especially use these strategies in my work life as an entrepreneur. Now, I’m not gonna spend too much time chatting about them because if I let myself go I could talk about just these 2 things for an hour (which actually, in my Create Your Peacefully Productive Schedule Course, I do a deep dive into both of these) but I do want to give you an overview of what these things are how they help me be peacefully productive.
BATCHING: Batching is doing the same task over a period of time to refrain from doing it day-to-day or week-to-week. It’s basically “work smarter, not harder” in action. Batching is a way to preserve both time and energy. Batching makes it to where you’re not constantly having to mentally shift from task to task (called task switching). You can focus on doing one type of task, which preserves energy and helps us get to a flow state in our work. Time is saved by batching because you’re not wasting time starting and stopping the same kind of task multiple times per day and because you're operating in a flow state, the quality of work you produce is higher.
So I assign a focus to each day of my week and do tasks that fit into that category. I have my week down to a well-oiled machine at this point and 99% of that is thanks to batching!
TIME BLOCKING: A well known time management tool where you divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is assigned a specific task (or group of tasks). During that time block, you only work on the task that you’ve assigned to it. This strategy helps us stay focused on a single task (or group of tasks that go together) with a less likely chance of giving into working a little bit on 15 things at once, really getting not much done, and sending ourselves into a tailspin of overwhelm. During each time block, you work on whatever is assigned. Nothing else. You can choose different amounts of time for each task and different tasks will require different time blocks. As you practice, you'll get better at learning how much time to allocate for each task.
So basically, I create a schedule of how I’m going to spend my time each day and that is time blocking. Because of batching and time blocking, I’m never wondering what is a priority and needs to be done and I’m never wondering when or how I’m going to get everything done because everything has a place. When you use these 2 things together, it is MAGIC! But remember…our schedules and routines are tools, not chains!
09. Turning notifications off (email, social, etc.) and having designated times to answer emails and messages
I’ve shared this on Instagram before but the only notifications that I have enabled on my phone are:
⋒ Libby app – so I know when library books I have checked out are ready
⋒ Peptalks app – which sends affirmations to my phone
⋒ Phone calls
Having everything else turned off so that I have to manually go in and check them has saved me so much mental energy and time. Phone boundaries have been the biggest gift when it comes to being peacefully productive in my own life. And not only do I keep my notifications off, but I have designated times to check and respond to texts, emails, and DMs, otherwise, I feel like I would never be able to focus on a task for more than 3 minutes without having a ding or a vibration snap me out of focus and distract me. Making real progress on my goals happens when I commit to windows of deep, focused work. You can’t have that if your phone is constantly disrupting you, you know?
I know y’all love a concrete example – same, same – so I’m gonna share with you how I handle emails and texts.
For emails, I check and respond to them 2 times a day – I do not leave my inbox open all day long. I used to and I never got a dang thing done because I felt the need to check and respond to emails as they came in. That’s for my personal email account.
Now for our Hustle Sanely customer support inbox, we have set hours for that as well. With my personal account, I don’t worry about telling people when I’m going to respond to their emails. I just get to them when I can. With the customer support inbox, it’s a little different because that is where people go when they need….well customer support, lol. For that one, we have an automated message that gets delivered to anyone who sends a message with our inbox hours and about how long they can expect to wait to hear from us. Communicating this to every customer takes the mental pressure off of me as a business owner to attend to every email as it comes in. And now, I have a VA who handles that inbox for me so I don’t even have to worry about it (bless her) but we still use the automated response strategy to clearly communicate our business boundaries to customers and students.
For texts, it’s the same – I sit down and answer texts 2-3 times a day. I’ve created this boundary for myself and I’ve clearly communicated it to my friends and family, too. They know that if they need to get a hold of me quickly that texting is not the move…to give me a call.
Someone asked me on Instagram how I communicate this boundary with my loved ones so here’s a little script for you to use as a guide:
“For my own mental health, I don’t have notifications for texts turned on. I check my personal messages 1-2 times a day and respond then. It helps me be more productive at work and have solid work/life balance. If you ever need to reach me for an emergency, call me and I’ll know it’s urgent, otherwise, I answer texts during one of the windows when I’m checking messages.”
It might feel cold to say something like that but I’d rather that than holding in a bunch of resentment toward everyone for always expecting a response to a text immediately, you know? Plus, when we display healthy boundaries in our own lives, I feel like it kinda inspires other people to do it for themselves…everyone wins!
Because of communicating this boundary, I never feel pressure or guilt to answer a text immediately. I get to decide when that happens – really helps with taking ownership of my time.
10. Treating your body like a temple
What you put in your body matters. How you move your body also matters. These are 2 things that are very much in your control and that very much affect how you show up for your life – your output (aka your productivity levels), your mood, your mindset, your energy… so much of how you behave in your daily life is because of how you’re treating your physical body.
Honestly, back when I was in SLP grad school and working 3 jobs, people used to be blown away by how well I handled doing all the things…like that’s why I started Hustle Sanely – people kept asking me how I was doing so much with such a positive attitude. I credit a lot of that to the physical healthy habits that have been part of my life since I was in my early 20s. Even during that extremely busy season of my life, I made it a priority to drink a gallon of water every day, get in 6 workouts a week (I was very much into weight lifting and HIIT training at that time), and I would meal plan and prep so that my body was being fueled by good quality food choices between work, lesson planning, studying, class, and practicum.
My favorite tips for treating my body like a temple:
⋒ Moving for 30 minutes mostly every day
⋒ Drinking 100-120 ounces of water mostly every day
⋒ Getting 7-8 hours of sleep mostly every day
⋒ Choosing mostly whole/real foods
They’re not complicated because they’re not supposed to be, lol. I feel like I could do a whole episode just on this – I’m so passionate about taking care of our physical bodies because they affect so much of what’s going on in the inside!
And there ya go – I’m telling you, these 10 habits really do help me live a peacefully productive life and I’m super confident that they can do the same for you, too!
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If you found this blog post helpful and you would like to listen to the full podcast episode, tune in below!
