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Thomas Oppong Follow

Feb 28 · 6 min read

50 Short Habits Super Productive People

Practice Every Day
Make time for metacognition before bed

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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium

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Photo: Aditya Wardhana/Unsplash

What can you do to make your day-to-day tasks more efficient and productive? It sounds
like a simple question. You’d be surprised how many people still struggle with this
question.

Real productivity is the ability to get essential things done in less time. It’s also about
managing your energy or matching specific tasks to your energy level to get them done
when you are most active.

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing
vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks,” Warren
Buffett once said.

Most people overestimate how much they can do in 8 hours and underestimate how
much can get done in a single morning.

If you work with your body you will be surprised at how much you can get done in a few
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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium
If you work with your body, you will be surprised at how much you can get done in a few
hours, especially if you know when you are most active. Open in app Get started

Highly productive people do more of what brings out the best in them: they focus on
when and how they are most effective to do their best work.

A greater percentage of what we do daily is powered by habits. Getting better things done
is a habit. It’s also a skill.

A few sets of your daily habits can guarantee the outcome you want. Some of these
productive habits can accelerate your progress daily.

1. You can’t get anywhere without a solid routine. If you are serious about getting more
things done, build yourself a productivity engine.

2. For anything you want to achieve, write it down. “Your mind is for having ideas, not
holding them.” — David Allen

3. Write down your most high priority and achievable goal every day, whether it’s
waking up at 6 am or writing for 30 minutes.

4. To better focus on what’s in front of you, remove all forms of distractions before you
start work.

5. Your phone is a massive distraction; whatever you do, don’t keep it close when you
assume focus mode. Turn off notifications and hide it in a draw.

6. Make fewer decisions before starting high-value work: reserve cognitive energy for
your most important work.

7. Your brain is active in the early hours of the day. Use it for cognitively demanding
work in the morning. Tackle your most challenging tasks before noon.

8. List your most important shortcuts and hacks that accelerate progress, and repeat
them daily.

9. Don’t wait for motivation to get started. Build a productivity engine and use it
consistently to get results.

10 Recharging your mind and body is as equally important as getting work done Take
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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium
10. Recharging your mind and body is as equally important as getting work done. Take
breaks on purpose. Open in app Get started

11. Drink a full glass of water to start your day. Dehydration can cause headaches and
impede cognitive function.

12. Managing time doesn’t always work. Try managing your energy: do your high-value
work when you are most active.

13. Schedule your priorities the night before. “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your
schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

14. List your distractions and measure their impact on your work. Aim to cut them out
when you are in deep sessions.

15. No matter how busy you are, choose your nutrients carefully. Eat superfoods for your
brain and keep hydrating: your mental clarity depends on it.

16. Don’t make decisions in the morning. Get straight to your high-value tasks. You are
most active in the morning: put that energy to good use.

17. Practice task inventory daily. Get rid of unimportant things so you can focus on only
high priority tasks.

18. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” — Jessica Jackley.

19. You need both morning and evening routines to set yourself up for success. Plan your
mornings the night before and tackle your complex tasks first thing in the morning.

20. Limit your action items for the day to a few essential tasks ( 5 at most) and focus on
crossing them off before the day ends.

21. Breaks your 8-hour-day into small blocks of deep work sessions (not more than an
hour) to improve focus. We lose concentration after more than an hour of deep work.

22. Respect daily productivity processes as much as you respect goals. Your success is
hidden in the things you do daily.

23. Experiment with different productivity systems (GTD, Pomodoro, Eisenhower matrix,
etc.) and combine a few that works for you.

24 Design your personal productivity system to increase speed and efficiency instead of
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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium
24. Design your personal productivity system to increase speed and efficiency instead of
sticking to what works for productivity gurus. Open in app Get started

25. For every task on your “action list”, consider breaking it down even further to get them
done in short sprints.

26. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” — Dale Carnegie

27. To minimize procrastination, limit access to all your distractions (phone, workspace
clutter, colleague chats and unnecessary meetings).

28. Use time pockets to upgrade your skills. Listen to an educational podcast or read a
great book to become smarter whenever you are waiting, queuing or commuting.

29. Note down everything that takes you away from your work. “You can’t say you’re
distracted if you don’t know what you’re distracted from.” — Nir Eyal

30. If you work in an open environment, get yourself a good pair of noise-cancelling
headphones to muffle distracting noise that interrupts deep work.

31. Replace perfect with good enough. Instead of waiting for an ideal outcome, focus on
making progress daily. One action at a time is how you make progress.

32. If you tend to stop work and react or respond to almost every distraction around you,
start scheduling your urgent but unimportant tasks.

33. Make time for metacognition before bed. Thinking about your thinking can help you
reflect on what’s working and what to improve.

34. Email is the biggest time suck. If you don’t plan to deal with incoming emails, you will
spend all your time reacting to what others want. Set aside time to deal with it.

35. Be proactive about how you spend your time. Be deliberate about what gets attention.
Don’t react or respond to tasks as they arrive.

36. Single-tasking works. It’s the only way to get more done faster. It can also guarantee
flow state. You’ve read about it, but do you practice it?

37. Don’t do random work in succession. Batch similar tasks together. The brain takes
time to get back on track when you lose flow.

38 Make time to disconnect from work Downtimes are as crucial as work time Regular
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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium
38. Make time to disconnect from work. Downtimes are as crucial as work time. Regular
breaks refresh the mind and prepare you for better work tomorrow.
Open in app Get started

39. Make solitude a productive habit. “If you avoid time alone with your brain your
mental life will be much more fragile and much less productive.” — Cal Newport.

40. Make time for a meaningful side project. It takes your mind away from your daily
grind and helps you engage in meaningful projects that guarantee fulfilment.

41. Start a shutdown routine: what you do to end the day. You could write your tasks for
tomorrow, reflect on your day’s accomplishments, or prepare for a successful
tomorrow.

42. If you spend an awful lot of time behind the screen, use the 20–20–20 rule to give
your eyes a break. For every 20 minutes of screen work, look away at an object 20 feet
away or 20 seconds.

43. Measure your daily processes. Are they helping you get closer to the bigger goal? What
habits should you do less of? Optimize at all times.

44. “When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have
been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you
can call it “done.”– David Allen

45. Make lifelong learning a habit. It’s the only way to find and use the best routines,
rituals, and behaviours to get things done.

46. Build an exercise routine into your schedule, no matter how small. It improves mental
clarity and gives you more energy. To make it a habit, don’t make it complicated.

47. Make walking a daily practice. Even a quick 20 minutes walk can do wonders for your
brain.

48. Stop pondering, start doing. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing,
you’ll never get it done. — Bruce Lee

49. Design a work environment that works for you. Are you more productive in silence?
Do you work better with white noise? Experiment and design a unique work
environment just for you.

50 Learn to rest well Your productivity depends on it You will do better and work faster
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3/5/22, 5:06 PM 50 Short Habits Super Productive People Practice Every Day | by Thomas Oppong | Personal Growth | Feb, 2022 | Medium
50. Learn to rest well. Your productivity depends on it. You will do better and work faster
when your mind and body are completely in sync. Open in app Get started

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