Here are 50 ideas to inspire you to get to work. Some of these ideas can potentially become core principles in your life, others can be simple tips to remember. Most of them have proven to be very efficient for me. I link to a lot of resources that have helped me tremendously in my journey towards self-improvement and getting work done. I link to 4 types of resources: article, book, video, and quote.
I believe some tips in this list truly have the power to change your life. They are core habits. They simply work, if you commit to them. I’ve seen them work with myself as well as other people. They will drive momentum as long as you don’t stop, and good things will happen along the way. They’re usually pretty simple, even obvious, because that’s what works best in life: simplicity. I marked those core habits with a star ☆
Everyone is different. Most of the advice given in any field usually needs to be adjusted to each and every one’s personality. Work can be done in a lot of different ways. Here are tips that work for me. Take out what you don’t want, apply what you need, and be honest with yourself.
What matters is the results.
- Put your phone in another room when you work
- One device, one use
- Keep only 10 newsletter subscriptions
- Work at the same time everyday
- Turn off all notifications
- Wake up early ☆
- No phone before 9am
- No phone after 9pm
- Read about your craft everyday
- Do emails only once a day
- Never work on Sundays
- Start your day by working on your Top Priority ☆
- Say no to things getting in the way of your Priorities ☆
- Remove toxic people from your life
- Choose a set of tools and stick to it
- Sleep 8 hours per night
- Always track your progress
- Keep working through the dip ☆
- Be honest in what you do
- Be grateful for how far you’ve come, be determined to get further
- Be organised
- Remove clutter
- Stop caring about other people ☆
- Batch similar tasks
- Have weekly reviews
- Do more than you talk
- Remove social media from your life ☆
- Keep calm and carry on
- Focus on being productive instead of busy
- Simplify, simplify, simplify ☆
- You choose how you react to your environment ☆
- Sleep on problems, don’t spend the night trying to fix them
- Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant
- Cancel your Netflix subscription
- Use the SelfControl app
- Don’t have more than 5 tabs open at a time
- Always carry a small journal/notepad with you
- Money is a side effect of success, not a goal
- Put some things in the calendar way ahead
- Be accountable to the people who matter in your life
- Learn about the flow triggers and how to make them work for you
- Prioritise or get left behind
- Learn about the sunk cost cognitive bias and its consequences on work
- Manage your time in blocks of 168 hours ☆
- The harder your work, the luckier you get. Do not rely on luck but on work.
- Focus on what is in your power instead of obsessing over what is not
- Every minute you spend in planning saves you 10 in executing
- Prefer systems over goals
- Smile more, it triggers the happy parts in your brain
- Commit for 6 months (or more) before saying you can’t do it ☆
Medium authors mentioned in this article: Lance Baker, Kolina Cicero, Adrian Drew, Darius Foroux, Nicolas Cole, Megan Holstein, Charles ALBAUT, Aytekin Tank, Niklas Göke, Sergey Faldin, Jonah Malin. Thank you guys for writing awesome content!
