12 Things Highly Productive People Do

highly productive people and breaks

All of us already have seen different people. One of them is highly productive people who succeed to do all things always. Others are those people who struggle with doing the basic things that they want or need to do.

What is the difference between highly productive people and average persons that struggles in doing things they need to do?

Are there some systems, tools or habits that highly productive people implement in their everyday job, that averages don’t use?

Yes, there is a difference between highly productive people and averages one. And, yes there is something as a system, tools, and habits that highly productive people use and averages don’t use.

In my personal experience, I always think that I am not good as I like to be. Maybe that’s a normal thing because I always want to make myself more productive tomorrow than today. But, on the other side, this thinking makes a strong pressure on me to make something different, to try something different, to organize myself differently, to try different systems… Without trying and making mistakes, I can’t learn something new and improve myself.

Different people have different habits and different productivity systems that they use in practice. Some of them don’t use systems to organize themselves in getting things done. Before several years, I was one of them, and that was a really terrible period of my life. I can’t say that now everything is perfect, but I can say that implementing systematically approach in organizing myself allow me to get more things done with the same effort.

Here are some of the most important things I think can make difference between highly productive people and an average one.

#1 Highly Productive People Organize Their Space

Highly productive people use systems in practice to get them organized their physical and virtual space. In such a way, they ensure that everything is done perfectly at the right time. They can quickly find the physical things and virtual information required to support their activities.

Disorganized people spent extra time to find stuff that they need as a support to their everyday activities. That extra time can be looking for documents on the computer, finding physical documents, looking for the particular phone number or email address. This type of distraction can be really messy and can kill your own productivity.

How do you feel when you can’t find something that you need it now?

#2 Highly Productive People Have a Workflow System

Everything can be systematized and organized. Many work activities we use repeatedly every day, on a daily basis, weekly or monthly basis. It is much easier when we know what we need to do, for what type of work. Then we can do the work even with closed eyes.

Workflow systems based on the most effective flow of your work will enable you to finish your work quickly and with better quality.

#3 Highly Productive People Have a To-Do List

Maybe to-do lists sound obsolete, but they are still one of the best tool and habit for getting things done. You simply need a fresh to-do list that will tell you what you need to do and when.

I like To-Do lists because they make me stay on top of my most important tasks every day. I like To-Do lists because they make me think about priority in my daily activities.

I like them because they make me more focused on the tasks that I need to do and ensure that everything important will be done.

#4 Highly Productive People Know When to Say No

Sometimes we can decrease our productivity simply because of our wish to do everything, to be everywhere, to satisfy everyone… It’s not impossible.

The highly productive people know when they need to say no to something.

You need another list that can increase your productivity – To-Don’t list. It is a useful tool that can remind you every day what you don’t need to do especially when you work on your most important things.

#5 Highly Productive People Have SMART Goals

Productive people always have SMART goals. That means the goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Limited.

You need such goals if you want drastically to improve your achievement and your overall productivity.

highly productive people distractions

#6 Highly Productive People Have a Perfect Plan

Everything that productive do is that they have a perfect plan as the vanguard of what they do. What is the perfect plan?

The perfect plan is a plan that will help you to do what you plan to do. If you successfully finish your work based on your plan you will know that you have a perfect plan. Such a plan at least needs to answer on following questions:

  • What do you need to do?
  • Why do you need to do it?
  • How to do what you need to do?
  • When do you need to do what you need to do?
  • Who will need to do what needs to be done?
  • Where do you need to do what you need to do?

#7 Highly Productive People Do Not Use Multitasking

Even we are surrounded with different tools around us that enable us to multitask and to manage to multitask, however, we must be aware that multitasking can be one of the biggest enemies of productivity.

Highly productive people commit their attention to one most important thing at a time. In such a way, they can give their best to do that task before they continue with the next one.

#8 Highly Productive People Eliminate All Possible Distractions

Today’s way of doing things enable too many possible ways to distract you from the work that you are doing now. New incoming emails, new signals of social media sites, phone rings and many more things are one of the biggest distractions and enemies of your own productivity.

Highly productive people eliminate every possible distraction when they work on things that really need to be done.

#9 Highly Productive People Prioritize Their Work

The real question that you need to answer each day is how you can decide which tasks are the most important at any given time to be implemented?

Highly productive people know what’s important and how to put first things first on their To-Do list. Simply use the time management matrix to implement the most important things first.

#10 Highly Productive People Delegate

Delegation is the process when one person transfers his responsibilities for performing some tasks to another person in the organization.

Delegating some part of the work activities to other persons will drastically increase your productivity. Highly productive people know what they can delegate and to whom they can delegate.

#11 Highly Productive People Work in Short Intervals

Highly productive people want to work on the high-priority things when their mind is fresh. Because of that, they use short intervals to do the work. Those intervals can be 60 minutes to 90 minutes. For example, if you use the Pomodoro system, there is the proposal for 25 minutes work and 5 minutes short break.

#12 Highly Productive People Improve Their Systems

Lastly, but not less important is continuous improvement of the systems you are using for things to be done better.

Because they use systems, they constantly try to find the ways how to improve them.