Productivity Tips to Balance Your Life
Work Less. Do More. Make Time.
I believe our best work comes from periods of focused intensity, balanced with meaningful leisure. Being bored, curious, and exploring the world in around you can give you necessary dots to connect to help you shape your ideas. But if you’re constantly working and don’t have free time to think, our minds don't have space to play and we’ll burn out in the long run.
Over the past two years, many of us have switched to working from home. And for some of us, we've quit our jobs entirely, to pursue our own endeavors. I've done both, but I've faced a few challenges in this new situation:
I've lacked some self-accountability to get the work done.
I've become easily distracted.
Big projects can overwhelm me.
And there are no boundaries between work and home.
Sound familiar? I've become fully aware of these problems, so I've been making intentional adjustments to change the outcome of my situation. In this article I'll share my favorite productivity tips which have helped me improve the quality of my work, reduce the time I spend working, and share how I make time for activities that refuel me for the long run.
Inspired by the tips I've learned from books and from others, these are the things that have worked for me, organized into 4 chapters. I’ve also included links to bonus resources at the bottom of the page.
If you prefer to consume this info in video format, watch the complete video guide here.
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Chapter One: Getting Started
The hardest part is starting. Not the emails or the busy work, but the real work. The work that brings you closer to your goals, to the impact you want to make, and the person you want to become. As author Stephen Pressfield would say: we face a lot of resistance. The hard work is far less appealing than easy stuff. Here are three things you can do to overcome that resistance.
1. Prime your surroundings: Remove interruptions and distractions.
It's the hardest yet simplest thing you can do to improve the quality of your work. Close your door. (or put on your noise canceling headphones) Turn off your notifications, set yourself to "do not disturb", close your email, close your browser tabs. Hide anything that doesn't pertain to your work. Don't worry, you're not going to miss anything by going offline for a short while.
2. Prime yourself: set a clear goal.
Create a to do list, something easily visible that you can check off, and set a goal for that work-session. If it's part of a big project, break it down into smaller pieces. Something that you can complete in one sitting. For example, if you're working on a script, you can break it down into smaller tasks, like writing an outline, then the intro and outro, then filling in the body. The smaller the task in your mind, the less overwhelm you'll feel.
I use the the Analog system to keep my to-dos always visible and accessible.
3. Start with a small time commitment, and go.
Just like the previous tip– to reduce the resistance towards starting– we can make the task seem really small. You can start by setting a timer for 5 minutes, and commit to working distraction-free. That 5 minutes will go by quickly, and you'll find yourself with a little momentum built. Extend that timer to whatever increment feels realistic.
When you take a break, it's important not to jump back onto your distractions. Leave all of those things off. Instead, get up. Stretch your legs, make a coffee, sit in silence, or lay down and close your eyes. Any stress and tension you've just built up, will calm down. You'll collect any lingering thoughts, and you'll be ready to dive into another session of deep work.
Some call it Pomodoro, I know them as Focus Sprints. Whatever you call them, it's simply a set block of distraction-free time, where nothing can interrupt the session. I've found this to be the easiest way to build inertia towards your work, and then keep that momentum going.
Learn more about Focus Sprints in this video I made a few years ago about distraction and innovation. You can watch the whole thing for context, or just jump to 6:55 for the detailed intructions.
On difficult days, I usually start with 5 minutes, then escalate to 30 minutes. I usually end after 60 to 90 minutes of work. Then I intentionally take a short 10-20 minute break to recharge. I usually end up working a total of 4 to 6 hours throughout the day, using this method. The work that comes out of this focus is higher-quality and better output, compared to my normal, unstructured approach.
Starting small and checking-off tasks is something I can celebrate each day, which is incredibly rewarding for my morale.
Chapter Two: Optimizing Your Workflow
Consider your current workflow:
What are the most common, repetitive tasks you do often?
How many steps do you take to execute them?
How much friction do you experience in the process?
If you want to be more efficient and effective at your work, we need to look at what’s slowing you down and where we can make improvements. The goal of these next tips are to remove barriers and reduce redundancies, to optimize your workflow.
1. Design your environment.
When all of your most used tools are within arms reach, the time you spend setting up tasks and switching between them is greatly reduced. If everything is organized and has a designated place, you'll spend less time searching for things, and will have more time and focus for your work. Below is a complete video guide about organizing your workspace.
2. Learn your shortcuts.
Most of us use digital tools to do our work. When you first start using an app, you tend to use menus and submenus to find your tool, adjust it, and then execute your task. It can be a lot of steps. But if you spend time learning and practicing your keyboard shortcuts, you can reduce the amount of steps it takes to get the same task done.
While it might seem disruptive at first to change your habits, once you train yourself to utilize shortcuts, you'll move so much faster through your work. Most applications will highlight the shortcut in the menu, the rest you can find and customize in your preferences.
3. Automate repetitive tasks
As part of our work, there are many repetitive tasks that we do. Like setup meetings, respond to common inquiries, and miscellaneous admin tasks. These days there are tons of tools that can help you automate your processes that will eliminate the trivial busy work from your life.
Here's how I automate my meeting scheduling:
When someone wants to meet with me, I send them my Calendly link, which shows my availability, based on my synced calendars and preferred days and times to meet. Once they choose a time, it will send them a video meeting link, add it to both of our calendars, and I'll get notified.
What used to take several emails back and forth to coordinate, now takes a single message to accomplish.
Chapter Three: Set Boundaries
Protect your time, your energy, and make fewer commitments. So you have the ability to focus when you're working, while leaving space to think and recharge. When you define clear boundaries, it's easier to determine what deserves your time and attention.
1. Check your compass.
If it's not a definitive “yes”, just say “no”. You may have heard this advice in other forms, but how do you practically become more decisive about what you take on?
Whenever a possible opportunity appears in my life, I tend to evaluate it with a few simple questions:
Do I want to do this? If so, why?
What do I want out of it?
Why now?
Is this more important than what I've already committed to?
Listing out at least three reasons is usually good enough to justify why you should let this enter your life. If you're having a hard time answering these questions, just pass. When you become more decisive, it's easier to prevent overwhelm and decision fatigue. Because you can decipher what's meaningful and what's trivial.
2. Listen to your body.
Working from home for the last few years, I've become more familiar with the rhythms my body goes through during the day. If you're like me, you know what times your energy typically peaks, based on past experience.
For me, I'm most creative in the mornings from 7am to noon. My energy is lowest in the afternoons, and the evenings are a hit or miss for me. So I try to focus all of my difficult work in the morning, and take care of any busy work– like emails and meetings– later in the day.
If you don't have a good sense of this yet, you can measure it by trying to work at different hours of the day (morning, afternoon, night), then record how productive you felt in each session. Track it for as long as you need to see an obvious pattern. Then shift your schedule to work at your optimal times. Scheduling your important work, when you’re most creative and energetic, tends to yield the best results.
Chapter Four: Leisure is Fuel
Leisure can be a powerful part of your everyday routine, if you make intentional, quality-time for it. Time away from your work is as important as time on it. For our health, our relationships, and to make space to think. Distance gives us perspective, and how you spend your down-time will determine how energized you feel when you return to your work.
I think our modern definition of leisure is where a lot of us get messed up, cause we end up spending our free time on things that don't enrich our lives, but rather, simply occupy our time. I'm not immune to this either, as I spend a good amount of time playing video games. Judgement aside, our goal should be to strive for activities that give our mind time to rest, think, and wonder. Our leisure should refuel us rather than deplete us.
A simple test to determine the value of your pastime is to simply ask yourself:
Does this make me feel inspired and energized, or do I feel drained after?
Video games, while very entertaining, I've found, usually leave me drained. On the other hand, I’ve found many alternative activities that both entertain me and refuel me. My current goal is to become a better storyteller, so much of my free-time is invested into reading work from authors I admire and watching documentaries that I can study.
I also like to go on walks without an objective. In this boredom, I hear or see something that connects to the work I've been ruminating on. Even though I'm not actively working, my curiosities are always trying to connect the dots for me in the background processes of my brain.
One pastime I enjoy is taking care of my plants. It’s slow-paced and calms me down.
These are just a few of the activities I spend my free-time doing that are personally fulfilling to me. For you, they could be very different. They can change based on your goals, and current interests. Whatever you determine is valuable to you.
Taking meaningful down-time is often the thing we need to complete our ideas. To open our mind to other possibilities and to give our brain the space, to see the bigger picture.
Leisure is fuel. This helps you return to your work everyday with new ideas, refreshed energy, and a clear focus.
Bonus Resources
Here are a few links to books and other resources I've found helpful to reclaim my productivity, improve my creative work, and balance my lifestyle.
📚 Productivity Books & Videos
3 Ways to Reclaim your Creativity and Productivity
How I use Notion to organize everything.
Kyle T. Webster: Make Time for Boredom
✅ Productivity tools & software
Calendly – Scheduling automation
Notion – My favorite, do-it-all productivity and database app
Superhuman – Significantly speed up your email workflow
Analog To-Do List – Save 10% when you use code "MATTHEWENCINA10" at checkout.
Notepad + Notebook by Grovemade*
Matte Black Pen and tools by Grovemade*
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K7 Keychron Keyboard
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