It happens that we get tons of tasks that we should finish them, but we’re used to be late at finishing them due to many reasons. I’d love to share some thoughts I learned from books such as Eat That Frog and other resources. I experienced them with myself the time and they helped me improve my productivity and get the most of my days and hope they will help you too.

As you know, productivity is a crucial matter and it’s not optional in successful people lives and it should not be in yours as well.

You need to make a plan for your day in order to track your tasks and measure what consumes your time and what can be a good investment for it. You will also need to put plans for long-term too as I will mention later.

The day that is not planned to is a wasted day.

Take it as a rule. Each day has its own incidents in addition to its routine, but you shouldn't let that dominate your daytime. Tracking your day giving you a better idea of what should be done and when to do so.
Take 5-10 mins before sleeping to make a plan list for what’ll you do the next day.

Optimize your list

1- Choose your tasks wisely

We all have hobbies, but not all of them have the same importance nor worth our time. They shouldn’t have the same weight on your tasks list and even the trivial ones should not exist.

2- Prioritize tasks

Tasks that have the most positive impact on your day progress should be on the top of your list. Most of the time, they’re the tasks that have +70-80% more importance than other tasks that might be trivial. They may be not likable and I am not asking you to like them, but when you finish them at first you will feel the joy of achievement. Tasks tend to be energy-consuming so you better start with the most important ones as when you reach the end of the day, you’ll have got the most of it in a proper way.

3- Begin Immediately

It may sound like a cliche, but it is not. To overcome procrastination, you should start immersing yourself in the task immediately. When you leave the time for yourself to decide if you should do the task now or later, you’ll find an excuse to postpone it and it’ll be a false pretense most of the time.

4- No multi-tasking

We should define what multi-tasking is. If you consider multi-tasking is doing multiple tasks at the same time, you should stop doing it then. But if you find multi-tasking is the ability to finish a task and start another one immediately without being distracted, then it’s not bad at all, but you should separate hard tasks to get out of the pressure cycle.

5- Keep away of distraction

As I’ve mentioned before while doing a tough task we like to delay or even leave it. Having distractions around us help to enforce this idea. Keep an eye on what distractions do you have and keep away from them while doing a task. It can be a friend chatting/calling you, noise, children, games, etc…

6- Track your time

Each task in your list should be specified by the time it should take. If you felt that you estimated the time wrongly, it’s better to play the priority game here and decide if these tasks should take another task’s time or not. If you prioritized your list as we mentioned before, you’ll have an easy decision to make here. Just don’t fall in the trap of doing one or 2 tasks and leaving other ones with more importance neglected.

7- Consistency

Make planning a habit. You’ll be more organized and more aware of when and what will you achieve a certain goal.

8- Plan for the long-term too

Daily plans are great for saving the day, but you should plan for the long-term for larger projects and tasks and divide them into tiny tasks in the short-term.

9- Pick your own style

I prefer planning on sticky notes because I feel joy when I finish a tough task and check on it. I keep the stuck note near my desk where I am working to remind me of my tasks every time I see it. I used to use Google Keep. It's simple enough and has helpful features, but I am more into sticky notes nowadays. If you’re a developer and you have other fellow developers whom you plan tasks with, you may choose a service such as Trello, but it’s not our case here.

You can try different ways and pick the way you find it more suitable for you.

10- Don’t be hard on yourself

Your tasks don’t have to be strict at all. They should include some fun. And even after each worthy task, you should reward yourself for some time, but it shouldn’t be for so long to not mislead the track of your tasks. You should also make a free day out of tasks, jobs emails, etc… For me, I’d love to free a day of my week out of programming, freelance, or other stuff. I prefer watching a movie, visiting a friend, and I even read tech articles on such a day. I know that reading articles may not be a relaxing activity for some of you in this day, but I just love reading them so I do it (and they’re indeed being part of my list most of the time).

Conclusion

Plans aren’t the only time saver and we all waste time, but not equally and it will happen that you will mislead the track of your time. You should be aware of this truth and minimize the time wasted as much as possible. Successful people are more organized and more aware of their weak points and they are always consistent and patient about working to achieve their goals. and you should be too.