3 Steps to Boost Productivity and Motivation

3 minute read

Adulting can be a juggling act.  Between working, working out, grocery shopping, cooking, maintaining friendships, trying your luck on the dating apps, and getting a solid 7 hours of sleep, it’s easy to feel like you’re somehow doing everything at once and still not doing enough.  This frustration can lead to a lack of motivation, making it even more difficult to get everything done.  Instead of giving up and succumbing to a TikTok rabbit hole, try these three steps to increase your energy and catch a natural productivity high.

Step 1:  Brain Dump Your To-Do List

Get it all out on paper.  Need to do laundry?  Write it down.  Need to send your third cousin a birthday text?  Write it down.  Even the far-out stuff that’s hanging over your head, like remembering to renew your passport next month.  Just write it down.  You won’t accomplish everything on your list in a day.  Some items you’ll end up rewriting the next day or every day until they’re complete, but that’s okay.  The point is just to get them out of your head, so you don’t waste precious energy trying to remember them.

Step 2:  Make an Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization tool developed by Dwight T.  Eisenhower, who apparently had excellent time management skills.  The four quadrants of the matrix represent different categories of tasks, measured by their levels of urgency and importance.  

The top left quadrant contains tasks that are both urgent and important.  Do these first.

The top right quadrant is for items that are important but not urgent, like renewing your passport next month.  Schedule these tasks or make plans to address them in the future.  Then, let them go for now.

Items in the bottom-left quadrant are urgent but not important for you, individually, to complete.  These tasks usually don’t require your specific skill set, or they could be done by somebody else.  For example, you may prefer to bring a healthy lunch to work.  Imagine that one morning, you wake up late and have to choose between packing your lunch and getting to work on time.  While both are urgent, getting to work is more important than packing your lunch because someone else (hello, Chipotle!) can make your lunch.

The last quadrant is our favorite because we don’t have to do anything in it.  These items are neither urgent nor important.  Write them down anyway, just for the satisfaction of immediately crossing them off.

Step 3:  Set Timers

Now that you’ve made your to-do list and prioritized your tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix, it’s time to get to work.  Keep yourself on track by setting timers for each task.  Responding to emails should take about 30 minutes, but it can take well over an hour if you’re answering texts at the same time.  By setting a timer, you’re holding yourself accountable to getting things done in a reasonable amount of time.  This helps prevent fatigue and stress since you’re using your energy wisely and accomplishing more.

In our fast paced world, time management is essential for staying motivated and accomplishing your goals.  While we haven’t yet figured out how to add more hours to the day, using strategies like to-do lists, the Eisenhower Matrix, and timers can help you make better use of the time you’ve got.