7 Ways Be 11% More Productive This Year
A time-management guru offers these tips to get the most out of your day.
There are usually 8,760 hours in a year. But in 2024, there will be 8,784 hours—giving you an extra 24 hours to get stuff done.
Or not. Many of us struggle with our time management skills— doom scrolling through Twitter when we could be writing our novel or tumbling into a YouTube rabbit hole about rescued cats (as I did recently) when we could be, I dunno, rescuing a cat.
To help offer some practical tips to make 2024 your most productive year ever, I spoke to Laura Vanderkam, a productivity guru, podcaster, and author of several bestselling books on the topic, including her most recent, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters.
Vanderkam draws on research and her own experience as a full-time professional and mother of 5 kids (yes, 5!). Here, she offers some ways to get the most out of your day.
1. Track your time
"When people say they want to spend their time better, the first thing I tell them is to figure out where the time is going now," Vanderkam says. "Because if you don't know where the time is going now, how do you know if you are changing the right thing?"
She suggests tracking how you spend every day from 5 am to 4:30 pm for an entire week. This will give you a more holistic view of your time than just looking at a random day.
Vanderkam has her clients create a spreadsheet with days of the week across the top and half-hour blocks along the left side. You can do this in Outlook or use the Time-Tracking Sheet on Vandkerkam's website.
"Remember to check in every couple of hours and then think back on what you were doing," she says. "A lot of times, time does get away from us. We often have no recollection whatsoever of 30-minute blocks."
2. Ask yourself what you'd like to spend more time doing
Once you've tracked your time, Vanderkam encourages you to celebrate what you're doing right in your weekly schedule rather than coming down on yourself for wasting time.
"Most people are not complete and total disasters, so you should be happy about whatever good routines you have," she says.
Ask yourself what you'd like to spend more time doing. The more time you spend doing stuff that excites you, the less time you will have to do the stupid, time-wasting stuff like continually checking emails.
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