Read time: 3 min.

Time is your most valuable asset.

If you value it, you must learn how to be productive.

The goal of productivity is to accomplish more—and spend less time being busy.

Unfortunately, most people hardly know how to be productive and suck at managing time.

The result?

They unintentionally waste hours of their valuable time and hardly get results.

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to teach you how to upgrade your productivity.

Busy people are hardly productive

The busiest people are often the least productive.

They proudly tell you about hitting another 16-hour workday.

In reality, they’re blinded by the grind, have lost sight of their working process, and are too busy being busy.

They have a hard time:

• Prioritizing the right things.

• Ignoring distractions.

• Creating free time.

Use the following 3 tools to take your productivity to the next level:

1. If you don’t control your schedule, it controls you

Divide your day into blocks.

Not structuring your day will make you prone to doing irrelevant things.

Time blocking forces you to become aware of the time you’re spending—and only should be spending—on your tasks.

Parkinson’s Law:

‘’Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.’’

In other words: the more time you give yourself to complete a task, the longer it is going to take you.

So reducing the time to complete a task, forces your brain to focus deeper and complete the task faster.

Experiment with this to see what works for you.

Having trouble structuring your day?

The next tool makes time blocking a piece of cake.

2. Set A Daily Highlight

Long to-do lists loaded with tasks often overwhelm.

Use a daily highlight instead.

It's the most important task of the day.

As long as you finish it, your day is a success.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Write down all tasks.

2. Identify the most important one (the daily highlight).

3. Identify the less important ones (the might-do list).

4. Time block each task into your schedule.

Pro tip:

Time block the daily highlight during your most productive hours and organize the rest of your tasks around it.

If you have trouble identifying your daily highlight, ask yourself this:

‘’Which task is the most important and requires my highest effort?’’

Ask yourself the night before, so you can start the morning with clarity—ready to execute.

3. The Myth of Multitasking

Working on two things at once seems productive, right?

Well, it isn’t.

Research shows that when we try to do two complex tasks at the same time, our brain doesn't actually multitask.

It rapidly switches back and forth between the two tasks.

This is an excellent way to kill your flow state—and destroy productivity.

Multitasking occurs when you get distracted and lose focus.

Counter this by:

• Using headphones with ‘’Deep Focus’’ music.

• Organizing your workspace.

• Enabling the ‘’Do Not Disturb’’ function on your phone.

When you still can’t focus, take a simple 10-minute break.

If you want to spend less time doing nonsense, try out these tools.

You will be rewarded in time.

See you next week.