I’m increasing productivity, because I’m involved in a lot of different projects.

I’m running two blogs, building a platform for young entrepreneurs, learning how to code, and of course I have the normal goals like spending time with my loved ones, getting in shape, eating healthy, … – you get the idea.

This situation is nothing special, everyone has a lot of things to do and multiple goals to achieve.

To keep track with the speed of life we need to be highly productive and work in the most efficient ways possible. That’s why I’m constantly learning new ways to hack the system and to increase my productivity – and I’m not speaking about outsourcing.

In this post I don’t want to go into the details of the different hacks (if you want me to provide more information, please leave a comment). I’ll give you a basic overview and point you to places where you can get more information.

Getting Things Done

I’m using a modified version of the Getting Things Done principle that was developed by David Allen.

Basically it’s about clearing your inboxes (who has only one mail account?) and deciding on each item what to do with it. If processing takes less than 2 minutes I’m doing it direclty, otherwise it goes onto some kind of project related task list or into a reference system to keep track of the information.

I recommend the following tools:

• OmniFocus – keeps track of my to-dos, I have it everywhere on iPhone, iPad, Mac
• Evernote – awesome free filing system!
• Asana – web based task management
• Things – iOS / Mac app

Of course you can find similar software for Windows and Android as well or stick to web applications.

Focus

It has a certain reason that every successful entrepreneur tells you to focus only on the most important things. This is true for business and for private stuff as well.

In the course Fizzle.co I learned from Chase Reeves (who got it from Scott Dinsmore and Warren Buffett), that you need to create a list of your 25 highest prioritized things you want to achieve. Then you focus only on the 5 most important things and avoid all others at all cost!

I went through this process a few days ago and I can already feel how I’m aligning all my actions to this 5 goals.

Together with this I’m creating my to-do list in a way that they carry 1-3 most important tasks for one day. Only when I get these done I process the other items.

Oh, and I stopped sticking around in social networks all the day and leaving my mail inbox open all time.

Education

Educating yourself is incredibly essential if you want to be successful. But it’s also eating up your time. In times you’re learning you obviously can’t do your work (don’t do multi-tasking!).

Currently I’m reading a book called Hacking Your Education by Dale J. Stephens, a comprehensive guide on how to improve the speed and efficiency of learning, communicating, and on changing your mindset for being more productive.

I’m spending 30 minutes per day reading. And I’ll probably increase this time because reading books really get’s me in a mood of creative thinking, which of course increases productivity.

That’s it! Three points that are making a huge difference for me in my daily routines.

Let me know what you think! What productivity hacks do you use?

To your success,

Jan