Top 5 Productivity Tools to Save Time and Energy
These top productivity tools are for you if:
- You complain of a lack of free time to read, exercise or care for yourself.
- You pretend to work, but it’s busy work that’s not relevant to your goals.
- You struggle to pick high impact work on your to-do list.
- You suffer from distractions that hinder your focus.
#1— Time Chunking
The fantastic thing about time chunking is you’ll know exactly how much actual work you do daily. Because you only measure significant work.
Most workers spend eight hours a day working. But how much they genuinely spend doing deep focused work instead of attending meetings, answering emails, and all sort of busyness?
How does it work?
Split your day in time cycles (chunks). Each chunk is 30 minutes long, during which you work non-stop for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. You repeat for as many times as you deem necessary.
The short breaks act as a circuit breaker to ensure you won’t burn out too quickly. They give your brain the time to recoup and get ready for another high-intensity session.
Customise the Span of Chunks to Suit Your Needs
If the timer always disrupts your focus, then 25 minutes is too short for you.
Experiment with different lengths of work and breaks until you find a sweet spot. Your custom time-chunked day might look like mine:
--- Morning Session ---Work for 50 minutes
Take a 10-minute breakWork for 50 minutes
Take a 10-minute breakWork for 50 minutes
Take a 60-minute lunch break--- Afternoon Session ---Work for 25 minutes
Take a 5-minute breakWork for 25 minutes
Take a 5-minute breakWork for 25 minutes
Take a 15-minute coffee breakWork for 45 minutes--- End of Work Day ---
Depending on being a morning person or a night owl, do long chunks when you’re energised and leave shorter ones for sleepy hours.
Follow these critical tips to maximise the effectiveness of this tool:
Tip 1 — Focus on one task in each chunk.
Tip 2 — Attack high impact tasks when you’re most energised.
Tip 3 — Group minor tasks and finish them in one chunk.
Tip 4 —Rest your mind during short breaks. No attention-grabbing activities such as news, social media, reading novels or watching TV.
You’ll enter and prologue flow states with ease once you customise time chunking to suit your circumstances.
#2 — Time Blocking
Popularised by Elon Musk and Bill Gates, this technique is the ultimate helper to saying no to distractions.
Block specific time for specific work and reject everything else. For example, from 8 AM to 10 AM, block time to write, and that’s it. No email reading or online browsing, etc. Focus all your mind on a specific task and only stop for breaks.
Real fanatics time-block everything: work-related tasks, hobbies, friends and family, sleep and exercise. Up to you if you want to go this far.
Here’s the thing: time blocking saves you from always making decisions. You automate your days and move from one activity to the next on autopilot. You’ll win back valuable time for things you enjoy doing. No more “I have no time to read or play with my kids” excuses.
By the way, time blocking works wonderfully with time chunking. Use them together to maximise your output.
#3— The Eisenhower Grid
If you want to organise tasks based on their importance and urgency, then an Eisenhower grid — a four square table — is the right tool for you.
Square 1: Urgent and important
You cannot mess up these activities. They are your top priority. If you don’t do them, you’ll suffer negative consequences on your life and career.
Finishing a business report for your boss, attending a visa appointment, or studying for exams all fit in this square.
Square 2: Important but not urgent
These are activities essential to your well being, but you won’t get dramatically penalised if you don’t do them.
Going to the gym, daily walks, spending time with family, meditating, etc.
Square 3: Urgent but not important
These are activities you must tend to, but they are a waste of your time logically speaking.
Work meetings fit into this category. Your highly extrovert manager do all the talking while you sit there wondering why the heck are you in the room.
Other examples include house chores, food shopping, dog walking, or picking a hotel for the upcoming trip.
Square 4: Not urgent and not important
These are activities like playing video games, doom scrolling, eating ice cream, and shaving your cat.
Best to avoid these activities forever.
#4— Opportunity Cost
Opportunity cost makes you a master at picking high impact, high-value tasks.
If you have many tasks that are equally urgent and important, which one you pick first? Do you choose randomly? This is where opportunity cost — a tool from economics — comes in handy.
Take a look at the definition:
Opportunity cost represents the potential benefits you’ll miss out on when delaying a task for later.
In English, it means — will you suffer significant damage if you don’t work on this task right now?
- If the answer is yes, that’s the task you should start on immediately.
- If the answer is no, look for the task that puts you in big troubles if you don’t get it done ASAP.
Use opportunity cost to organise your list of critical tasks: from homework to day job to significant business and personal decisions.
#5— Daily Standups
Daily standups are short meetings that companies use to guarantee the continuous delivery of team members.
At a personal level, standups serve as a constant reminder of your priorities — the daily tasks that are most relevant to reaching your goals.
- Set a few minutes every day for a standup session before you start work.
- Stand up and ask yourself two questions: What tasks did I do yesterday to progress toward my goals? What tasks will I do today to advance toward my goals?
- Reflect on what you just said. Did yesterday’s work bring you closer to your goals? Are today’s actions a step forward in the right direction?
Here is an example from my routine:
“Yesterday, I wrote and published a new Medium article. Today I will read and build documentation for my upcoming article.
Yesterday’s work was a step closer toward my goal to become a top medium writer. Today’s tasks are also critical for my goal.”
Though a few minutes long, standups bring immediate awareness to your life priorities. They act as micro-reviews: are you making real progress, or is it busy work you did, such as answering emails, returning phone calls, or attending meetings.
Sometimes the only way to free up time is to boost your intensity. If used correctly, these top productivity tools will help you work smarter and save enough time to recharge and live your life.
