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Are You Setting Yourself Up for a Productive Day?
Do you ever have one of those days where you can’t seem to focus your brain?
You might find yourself trying to get started on a task, but other things keep disrupting you. Or you might just feel a little tired and foggy.
We’ve all been there, and we know how frustrating those days can be. After all, we all have a lot of things to accomplish! These tasks are often tied to work, which directly impacts our income. That’s why having a productive day isn’t just beneficial for our mental well-being, but for our quality of life as well.
Though there are some life factors that you don’t have control over, you do have a say in how you start your day every morning.
That’s why we’ve pulled together our recommendations for waking up on the right side of the bed, ready to take on the day.
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How to Get Your Employees to Start Tracking Time
In order to make smart, informed business decisions, you have to be acutely aware of how you are spending your time.
Freelancers tend to have a more innate realization of this, since the impact of time spent versus value received is more obvious. After all, it’s imperative to a freelancer’s direct income that he or she properly bill clients for hours spent working or projects delivered.
However, this concept also applies to larger businesses—actually even more so. If being conscious of time is important for a single worker, think of that significance as you multiply the amount of people working.
Productivity and awareness are critical to a lean team, and the impacts can seem more apparent on a smaller scale. But with a bigger team, the seemingly minor effects of wasted hours can add up—creating a big hole in productivity and earning potential for a business.
That’s why being cognizant of how your employees are spending their time each day can have such a colossal impact on your bottom line.
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How to Become a Freelancer (When You Already Have a Full-Time Job)
For a long, long time people have sidetracked from their primary jobs to do a little something extra. Whether for financial reasons, exploring a hobby, or personal fulfillment, it’s not out of the ordinary to feel the itch to branch out on your own a bit.
Thanks to more digitized communication, having a side hustle has become a lot more attainable. It’s also made it so that tapping into a secondary source of income isn’t confined to just having a store on Etsy (though that’s cool, too). Nowadays, you can take almost any talent—especially one that translates across digital properties—and use it to your advantage by becoming a freelancer.
Though freelancing may sound attractive (we mean, who doesn’t dream of ditching the 9-to-5 grind), we understand—and recommend—the need to dip your toe into the water before diving in headfirst.
Keep in mind that being a freelancer requires a certain kind of personality—one that is driven, organized, and realistic. But we know that has y-o-u written all over it, so let us share insider tips on how to get rolling.
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It’s Time to Take a Hard Look at Your Productivity
We hear a lot about productivity and how it’s one of the “secrets” to success.
After all, productivity is the basis of working smarter, not just harder (though working hard is certainly an important quality to embrace). This drive and mindset helps to complete projects or reach milestones within optimal timeframes.
And being productive is not just about spending less time on tasks—it’s more about maximizing the time you are occupying in a more valuable way. In doing so, you’re able to avoid jamming hurried work into a specified amount of time, and instead produce good work.
Productivity is definitely a hot topic in our society, especially since the introduction of modern technology. With all of our devices, notifications, and access to content, it’s easier than ever to give in to distractions that take your focus away from a particular task.
Even if you adhere to deadlines most of the time, it’s still helpful to take an audit of your productivity levels (or lack thereof) and put a process in place to improve them.
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The Benefits of Daily Work Breaks
The rat race is real, people.
We are continually hammering ourselves into the ground to be the best, earn the most, and prove our value to others.
Although it’s great to have strong ambition and pride in your work, too much pressure and commitment to the grind can do the exact opposite of what you desire.
Whether feeling the need to be connected to work 24/7, or cramming for a university exam, we often throw sleep and self-care to the wayside in favor of pushing unrealistic expectations upon ourselves.
The result is detrimental—lack of sleep, relaxation, and exercise can affect not only the level of your work (it’s hard to be on your A-game when you’re a worn-out mess), but can also have negative effects on your overall health.
That’s why it’s important to take breaks during your workday.
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How to Make This School Year Your Best Yet
Hey, students! You’ve likely spent your summer break traveling (lucky duck), interning, on your parents’ couch, or working to pay for next semester’s tuition (kudos to you).
Whatever the case, it’s time to dust off the notebooks and hit the library stacks, because university is back in session.
The back-to-school wave can bring on a number of emotions. We always personally loved the feeling of starting a fresh chapter—it seemed like an infinite oasis of opportunity to take the bull by its horns and really live up to the potential we knew was inside of us. We wanted to commit to our studies and accomplish a laundry list of endeavors for the year. (A little overzealous, but a good attitude nonetheless.)
On the other hand, it can feel a bit daunting. You go from having at least some control over your schedule to being inundated with lectures, class assignments, pressures to map out the future, and the non-stop flow of social engagements.
But, our friend, have no fear. Timing is here to help you tackle the new semester and set yourself up to have your best school year yet.
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Night Owl or Early Bird: How to be Productive at Night?
Because you don’t have to be up at the crack of dawn to be productive!
I really wish that I could bounce out of bed at 4am, drink some lemon water, and be on with the day. In fact, I once did that for a week and was a crying wreck by 7pm on Thursday. My coworker made me promise I’d stop.
Were I to believe many of the productivity articles and entrepreneurs out there, this flaw means I’ll never be successful.
When entrepreneurs talk about their morning routines, I feel like I’m in a locker room conversation of everyone one-upping the next. “I wake up at 5am and spend 90 minutes working out,” “Well I wake up at 4am, run a 10k, then mentor underprivileged kids and found a new NGO before checking emails by 8am.”
Sir Richard Branson wakes up every day at 5am and encourages everyone to do the same. Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo is up at 4. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is up at 5:30am and out the door for a jog. They’re not the anomalies. In an informal survey, 90 percent of executives identified as being early risers.
Feeling guilty for sleeping in till 7?
This guilt made me want to explore a radical concept: what if you can sleep in, but still absolutely crush the heck out of your day?
Some entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, seem to be both lark and owl — getting 6 hours of sleep a night. Other CEOs swear by 4 solid hours, and even advise on how to cut your sleep down to that little.
The thought of only 4 hours sleep a night, though, is a little horrifying. So we talked to some real-life night owls, and guess what? They’re still getting loads done, and getting plenty of sleep in the process. Here’s why our successful night owls swear by the evening hours for their productivity.
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