Welcome to another episode of dream job with Danielle Cobo . I am Danielle Cobo, career and leadership coach. And today we're gonna be talking about six tips to increase productivity in your life. Sometimes one of the biggest challenges that we have just in life is creating balance. And sometimes it really starts with increasing our productivity when we are at work. And so if we can create balance in our lives, then we can create joy and happiness in our lives.
Cause at the end of the day, we spend more time at work. Then we do at home with our own family. And many of you guys as have heard me say that on multiple occasions. And when we get to be present at work and be productive, then when we go home, we get to be present at home. And so I'm be sharing with you six tips to increase productivity while you're at work.
The first tip is beginning of your day , write down three things that you wanna accomplish that day three things, because when we write them down, it puts action in place. And here's my recommendation for you. Have you ever heard the phrase, eat the frog first eating the frog is choosing the one task you don't wanna do. So if one task is doing your expense report, eat that frog , get it outta the way, right from the get go .
Because what happens is, is if you wait till the end of the day to do that, you're gonna be dreading your day throughout the entire day. So eat that frog first , get it done, get it outta the way so that you get to then spend to the rest of the day, working on the tasks that you enjoy doing. Now, the next tip is block scheduling.
So one of the advantages of block scheduling is if you can create time within your calendar, where you get to do certain tasks, then try to block them in similar tasks because what happens is, and I'm gonna use this as an example. So I create content for LinkedIn every single day I post on LinkedIn. And so what I'll do is I will actually have content days. And so what I'll do is I'll block out an entire day and I write content.
And the reason being is cuz it keeps my mind focused when I'm working on that same task. So where there tasks within your job, where if you get to block out a day or block out a certain hours to do that task, you're gonna keep your mind in that mind . So one example might be block out time for your calendar to check your email. Because what happens is, is if we're constantly checking our email throughout the day, then what happens is, is it can be a distraction.
Our mind is with the tasks that we're doing, but then we're constantly being pulled away to check our email. And then we get distracted by the tasks that are coming up in our email. So block out time throughout your date , maybe it's check your email in the morning. So you write down into three tasks that, that you get to accomplish that day, eat that frog first, check your emails, see what's going on that day.
Then complete the task that you get to during the morning time, block out time within your calendar, check your email again. And maybe at the end of the day, block scheduling can be very valuable to increasing pro productivity while you are at work. Keep your mind in that same mindset for certain tasks. The next tip , uh , tip that I recommend is unplug.
And what I mean by unplug is while you're at work, try to unplug your cell from distractions, with social media, with, you know, your phone, constantly ding with text messages, try to really keep your mind focused on whatever you're doing. And when you unplug, then you really get to be present at work. Now I also acknowledge you may not be able to turn your phone off entirely, right? Because we do have incoming calls for work.
And I always keep my phone on for, you know, my family just in case anything were to happen, but try to keep off, try to keep at bay some of the other distractions that you might have. So some of the steps that I would recommend is turn off notifications. So a couple things that you can do to turn off notifications. And this is another tip for productivity.
The notifications can sometimes be distractions because anytime that you're focused on a task and your mind is taken away by another notification, then that can dis disrupt your productivity. So I invite you to turn off notifications for Facebook, Instagram , um, as well as emails because any again, and I've said this earlier, any time that you're working on a task and you see that notification pop up and it's an email, it's a distraction. So unplug from those.
The other tip that I recommend for you is determine the urgency and the importance of your tasks. So if an email comes through and it takes less than five minutes to respond, take care of that task right away, take care of it right away. If , if it takes longer than five minutes, then determine what's the urgency of that particular email. Is it something that you get to respond to right away and maybe , um , put some other things to a different timeframe within your day?
Or is it something that you get to then drag that email? So if you're working with outlook, you can drag that email into your calendar and schedule time to do that task. So if it takes less than five minutes, do it right away because oftentimes when you touch an email and you don't do it, and then you go back to that email and you don't do it, you're actually spending more time constantly touching that email than it is to just take care of that task right away.
If it takes longer than five minutes, drag it to your calendar and schedule time for it. Another tip that I re meant increase productivity throughout your day, clean up your inbox. Are you one of those people that has a thousand emails in your inbox? I know that you were probably out there. I admit it. I was guilty at this point as well at this , um, challenge. And so I challenge yourself to really clean up your inbox.
There is science around the fact that when you minimize clutter within your life, you actually have a sense of peace and you get a chance to really increase your productivity because you're not bogged down by all these emails that are glooming over your head. So if you use outlook for example, and I'm gonna say outlook, because a lot of us use outlook in, in the workforce. So if you have outlook, you can actually set your emails to conversations.
So with groups, if you have five emails and they're all associated with the same convers it'll group, all those emails together. So that would be the first step. The second step that I would say is sort your emails by who it's from, okay. When you sort your emails by who it's from, then you can kind of go through in groupings. What are some emails that you can just immediately delete? Is it a notification that you have a new credit card transaction?
Because if it is, can you, can you group all those emails together and maybe delete 50, a hundred emails all at once? That's an option. And so really take into account. What are those emails that you can just group all together delete automatically because when you can delete a grouping of them, it already there's science behind the fact that it already feels good to eliminate that clutter in your life.
So clean up that inbox in this third step to cleaning up your inboxes, you can actually set rules within outlook. So if you use a outlook, you can set rules where if you say, if I receive an email from this particular , um, from this particular person or this particular , uh, program, and I'm gonna use expenses, for example, because I know a lot of companies use concur.
So if you're using concur to do your expenses, a lot of times it will create an email that says you have a new credit card transaction. And so what you could do is you can create a rule where either those emails automatically go into a folder that are all your expenses, or if you're highly organized, you can actually have those automatically go into your deleted folder.
And then it's not filling up your inbox because when you can create rules and you can create and minimize these distractions, minimize these kind of filler emails, what happens is you're creating the E you're creating a space for the emails that are really important. You're not having to spend your morning going, okay, I'm gonna delete this one, delete this one, delete this one.
If you find yourself constantly deleting emails, then ask yourself, is that an email that you can automatically put into folder or into your deleted? And I know there's some people out there that get nervous about deleting emails. I get it. We get attached these emails. We want to be able to reference them as your it department, because a lot of times these emails are actually archived. So you can go into your deleted folder and you can still search these emails.
They're oftentimes not permanently deleted. And sometimes your it department can set up a , uh , archive where these, these emails automatically go into an archive.
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So here are simple tips to increase productivity during your day, and I'll kind of go through them one more time. The first one is write three things that you want to accomplish with that day three tasks you wanna accomplish eat the frog first, pick the task. You don't wanna do eat that frog first and get it out of the way, right from the get go .
And the second one is block scheduling, block scheduling, keeping your mind set in the same tasks so that you are keeping your mind on these same tasks for these of task. It actually helps your mind get through some of these because you start to develop a flow when you're doing the same task within a certain timeframe. Next one is unplug, unplug yourself from the distractions, the constant binging and, and, and what I mean by that is eliminating the distrac , the distractions.
When it comes to email notifications, social media notifications, we're constantly having , uh , information sent to us from all angles. Whether it's through email, through text messages, I don't know about you, but I've got like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, telegram , um , also of , uh , LinkedIn emails. We're getting information and contacted in so many different ways.
So can you eliminate those distractions throughout the day and really do block scheduling saying this is when I'm gonna respond to my emails. Okay . The next one again is determine the urgency and the importance of each of the emails or the tasks that are coming at you. If it takes less than five minutes, take care of it right away. The more times you touch something and more times you touch an email, you touch a bill. If it takes less than five minutes, just do it right away.
Otherwise, all you're doing is just prolonging and you're spending more time on that task than it really needs. And if it takes longer than five minutes, determine the urgency. Is it something that you get to , to take care of right away, and you maybe need to move other tasks to a different time, or if it's got a time for where it doesn't need to happen for within the next week, drag that task into your calendar and schedule time for yourself to do that task. Your time is valuable.
Schedule time with yourself to do that task. And the last one is clean up that inbox. Try to go through as many emails as you can put them in conversations , uh, sort them by who they're from and try to clean up your inbox as much as you possibly. Can. I challenge you and invite you you to get to zero.
I know this can be a big task for a lot of people, but there's science behind the fact that when you eliminate clutter in your life, you immediately feel a presence of peace and calm and not having these looming emails just looming over your head. So clean up that inbox create , uh , groupings of emails that can automatically go to deleted, create rules within outlook. So that emails that are alike , that you wanna just send to a folder, you can do that as well.
So that way the , in the emails that are in your inbox are just the emails that you get to take care of and respond to. By doing these simple steps, you can increase productivity in your life. And when you increase productivity at work, you then get to create balance in your life. And I have a course will share future episodes on dream job with Danielle Cobo podcast, I will share future episodes on how to further create balance in your life. Work life balance is important. Worth life .
Balance is important for our mental wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, our physical wellbeing, because when we have balance in our lives, we, we get to connect with people. We get to bring joy in our life. We get to be happy. And so I invite you to take these steps, increase productivity in your life so that you can be present at home and you get to take care of yourself. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of dream job with Danielle .
I invite you write a comment, write a review, like subscribe and share this episode with your friends and family. Because if you enjoy this episode, I'm sure there's people out there that would enjoy it as well. And tag me in it. I will then share that on my social media as well. So thank you so much for tuning in, have a great day and create an intentional day.