How to Be More Productive in 2023: Best Hacks, Tricks and Tips to Use Today

Want to discover how to be more productive?

Some say sleep is the hidden secret. 

Others think it’s nutrition.

Maybe it’s setting up routines.

It could even be exercise.

So which one is it?

It’s all of that.

And more!

In this blog post, we’ll go over 15 of the best tips to help you become a productivity whiz. Whether you’re looking to boost personal productivity or are looking to boost your work performance, we’ve listed everything you need!

Let’s get started.

Personal Productivity Tips

Here are some great productivity hacks to help you master productivity in your personal life:

1. Use a To-Do List

David Allen, the creator of the Get Things Done Methodology, pointed out a simple solution for remembering tasks:

Capture all your tasks in your to-do list, even if you have a fantastic memory and don’t need any reminders. 

Writing it down gives your brain the liberty to forget about it, and allows it to use its limited attention to focus on the task at hand.

As everything you need to remember is neatly arranged in this list, you won’t be spending time searching for what you have to do. Whenever you’re confused about what’s next, just glance at your to-do list and you’ll have all the information you need!

Here are the best to-do list apps available today.

2. Identify Your Most Productive Hours

Tons of highly productive people have an early morning routine to maximize their productivity.

But what if you’re not one of the early risers and a morning routine isn’t your thing?

Are you doomed to a life of mediocre productivity?

No!

Different people work best at different times. 

You don’t have to be an early bird. You can be a night owl. Or an afternoon antelope?

It doesn’t matter.

The key is identifying which part of the day you’re most productive and use it to focus on deep work. As your energy levels are at their peak, you’ll find it easier to breeze through your work and get things done. 

But how do you identify these deep work hours?

Monitor your energy levels every day over the course of a week. 

Chances are, you’ll identify a specific period where your energy levels are high and you’re primed for work. 

This is your deep work window – use it wisely.

3. Exercise

Do you know what most highly productive people have in common?

They all engage in some kind of physical activity regularly.

You don’t necessarily need to join SoulCycle or a CrossFit gym to be more productive.

What works for one person may not work for you. 

A lot of highly productive people can boost their energy by simply going to their neighborhood coffee shop or walking to their nearest coworking space. 

Don’t believe us?

Instead of sitting around inside, Steve Jobs used to take colleagues on long walks to set up energetic discussions and debates. 

However, if you’re having trouble finding the motivation to get out and be active, try joining a class of some sort. Classes hold you accountable, which can help you beat procrastination.

Also, exercise provides you with a good endorphin release to boost your energy and give you a more complete work-life balance.

Here’s a closer look at why exercise equals productivity.

4. Get a Good Night’s Sleep

While being awake all night can help you get more work done, it’s not an efficient way to work. Research found that businesses experience an annual loss of $411 billion in productivity due to a lack of sleep!

But why?

Think of sleep as your phone’s charger.

When you sleep, you’re plugging yourself in and charging your inner batteries.

Sure, you might not be able to do much while your phone is plugged in, but think of what would happen if you never charged it?

You’ll run out of energy and won’t be able to do anything, right? 

Think just a little sleep is enough to keep yourself running smoothly?

Nope.

Working on low amounts of sleep is like using your phone on its battery saver mode. 

You’re not as bright, not as fast and definitely not as good!

5. Stay Hydrated

The brain is basically just a gooey water-blob. 

Without water, you have no brain. 

A profound insight to increase your productivity: Drink lots of water!

Most people don’t drink the amount of water they need per day (at least a half-gallon) and suffer an enormous range of physical and mental consequences as a direct (and entirely foreseeable) result. 

Keep water close by and sip it constantly. 

It keeps you alert and healthy – both good things if you want to be productive.

6. Find What Drives You

What makes your life more fulfilling? 

According to Daniel Pink (who literally wrote the book on fulfillment—a New York Times bestseller called Drive), extrinsic motivation (money, bonuses, candy, etc.) doesn’t work. 

Instead, intrinsic motivation is what matters. He found that most highly productive individuals were intrinsically motivated – rather than motivated by external rewards.

Specifically, he focused on mastery of a certain skill or expertise. Connecting an internal motivation to how you operate will increase your drive, which will also help with your productivity.

See more about doing the work that makes you happy.

7. Adopt a Growth Mindset

Most highly productive individuals have a growth mindset in place.

What’s that?

A growth mindset entails understanding that through practice, hard work and effort, you can improve upon your abilities and learn new things. 

Getting there is a journey, but it opens up new ideas and experiences for you to try, rather than forcing you to be “productive” in a certain way. 

Adding a stretch goal to try and adopt new habits will keep you growing and adapting. This way, you’re not focused on a narrow view of productivity – you’re open to bettering yourself as a whole!

See the difference between fixed and growth mindsets.

8. Try the Pomodoro Technique

Want to know how to be more productive?

Try the Pomodoro technique for time management. 

A Pomodoro is made up of four sessions of 25 minutes each, with a five-minute break in between. After four Pomodoros, you can take a longer break: usually 30 minutes for efficient time management. Taking frequent breaks to ensure that you pay attention to your body’s ultradian rhythm, that is, the natural ebbs and flows of your energy levels.

This time management technique helps stay productive as it gives you an end goal in sight. You have a break coming up every 25 minutes – pushing you to work hard and earn that time off! 

9. Stop and Reflect

Want to increase productivity?

Take a break. 

Put down that phone.

Log off social media.

Stop listening to music.

Just take a moment to stop and reflect on what you’re doing and what you’ve accomplished. It’s a great way to give your mind some time off to help you refocus on what matters. 

Remember, those social media posts aren’t going anywhere – they can wait. 

Do you know what you can’t wait?

Giving your brain the break it deserves.

Productivity Tips for Work

Use these productivity hacks to boost your performance at work immediately:

10. Create Systems and Processes

Do you find yourself writing things down multiple times, trying to coordinate across multiple apps and still not getting your work done?

Then you need a system to connect your tasks and collaborate with your team members.

Creating a system will streamline your work activities as there’s a pre-established process in place. You won’t be spending time wondering how to proceed with a task; just consult your system and you’re good.

However, when creating systems and processes at work, it’s important to get everyone on the same page. You can’t create a process and expect it to work without showing your coworkers how it works. 

Before implementing any system or process, ensure that:

• Everyone knows why you’re implementing it
• How it will benefit them
• What they have to do

After you do this, you’ll have no trouble collaborating with team members and breezing through tasks.

11. Set Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

Goal setting is one of the most important parts of productivity.

By setting up goals, you’re giving yourself a clearly defined target to achieve. 

However, it’s important to set the right kind of goals.

Most people only maintain short-term work goals like sales numbers or meeting a deadline. While these help you zero-in on what you have to do, they’re not fulfilling by themselves. 

Most highly productive individuals also set long-term goals. These goals can be more abstract – such as making more time for their kids or doing a  better job of leading their team. This will help you move your work forward into new directions that you may not have expected.

You can use certain timeline tools to help achieve your goals, or you can use ClickUp. In ClickUp, you can set goals and objectives for your team with our Goals feature. This is an easy way to clarify the most important tasks for your team so that they don’t get lost in the shuffle. Set goals on a monthly, weekly or daily basis – you choose!

Read more about how to set great long-term goals and short-term goals.

12. Separate Your Individual Tasks from Your Team Tasks

While it’s important to tie your individual tasks to your overall team goals, you’ll have to separate them. It’s easy to get lost in the noise of your team’s overall progress and forget what’s exactly in front of you.

For example, your team might have to reach a certain sales target but what tasks do you personally have to execute to contribute to that team target? 

Productivity tools like ClickUp offer filtered views to help you focus on your tasks, and even record what you’ve been working on recently. This is a solid way to stay focused while also documenting your successes and past activity. 

Read more about team and personal views in ClickUp.

13. Group Similar Tasks Together

Highly productive people use batching to boost their productivity.

This is the process of grouping similar tasks together to breeze through them more effectively.

By creating batches of similar tasks, your mind won’t have to constantly switch between resources to get it done. As these tasks are so similar, it can use the same resources to breeze through them! 

For example, if you have to first check your inbox for incoming mail and then send a few messages, why not go through them in succession?

As they’re so similar, you won’t have to readjust your mental state when progressing through both the tasks.

14. Don’t Multitask

You can’t force your mind to work on two different tasks simultaneously with the same level of efficiency.

It just can’t be done.

Research even found that multitasking can reduce productivity by 40%!

Why?

Switching between tasks can interrupt your workflow and zap your productivity levels.

Think about it.

If you’re moving from one task to the other repeatedly, your mind has to readjust what it has to do and perform different activities.

For example, you can’t schedule your meetings, upload social media posts and screen job candidates at the same time, right? 

Instead of trying to do three tasks at once, why not attempt each one separately. Contrary to popular perception it won’t take you extra time. Moreover, the quality of your work is going to be way better. This reduces the need for any corrections later on – which actually save you time in the long run!

15. Delegate

You only have one brain.

There’s a limit to what it can handle.

While most project managers would love to handle all the project activities themselves, it’s not possible. Not only will it slow your progress, it’s going to tire you out! 

If you want to boost productivity at work, you’ll have to learn to delegate. 

Trust your team’s ability to get things done and assign work to them. By distributing the work among multiple employees, you’re speeding up your progress and minimizing your chances of worker burnout.

Project management tools like ClickUp allow you to instantly assign work to team members and eliminate the need for any follow-ups.

How to Use a Productivity Tool to Get More Done

If you really want to boost productivity, consider using a dedicated productivity platform like ClickUp.

With ClickUp, you won’t be asking yourself questions like:

• What was I supposed to do today?
• Where am I spending time on work?
• What meetings do I have today?
• How am I wasting time?
• What are my employees working on?
• What’s the deadline for this project?

Here’s a closer look at how to use ClickUp to increase your productivity:

A) Know What’s Most Important 

ClickUp’s priorities will help you identify your most important tasks and get to work on them immediately. 

With a simple color-coded system, you can instantly identify which tasks are important and which ones to de-emphasize. ClickUp also lets you filter your tasks by priority to make it easier to address your most vital tasks and meet your deadline.

B) Never Forget Anything Again 

ClickUp has powerful reminders to keep you updated on what you have to do. Whenever you have something coming up, set a reminder for it and lay back!

When the time comes, ClickUp will remind you of it and you can get to work immediately. You can even customize where you receive these reminder notifications such as via your email inbox, desktop app or mobile device. 

C) Create Lists for Everything!

ClickUp lets you add checklists to all your tasks and subtasks. 

Whether it’s a project-related list or a grocery list, ClickUp can handle it all.

Whenever you have something to do, just create a list for it and check off each item as you progress. You can even create checklist templates to instantly add them to all your future projects.

D) Seamlessly Delegate Tasks

Want to ensure people actually follow-through on what you delegate?

With ClickUp’s assigned comments, you can instantly convert a task comment into a task and assign it to a team member. They’ll receive notifications of this and can get to work on it immediately. 

Once they’re done, they can even mark the task as resolved – saving you the trouble of following-up on them. 

E) Easily Store and Organize Your Thoughts and Ideas

ClickUp’s Notepad is the perfect place for writing down all your thoughts and ideas. With rich text formatting options, you’ll have all the features you need to craft detailed notes that accurately reflect your ideas.

ClickUp even lets you create tasks out of your notes to help you take action on them immediately.

F) Use a Centralized Space to Keep Up with Everything

ClickUp’s inbox is the perfect place to keep up with all your tasks, reminders and notifications. Make it a habit to look at your inbox as part of your morning routine to stay informed about what you have coming up. 

Learn tips and tricks of how to get started with ClickUp.

More Resources on How to Be More Productive

• The Science Behind a Productive Mindset: Are you stressed out and wasting time regularly? Find out what makes a productive mindset as well as how to get into the habit of eliminating procrastination.
• Top Productivity Blogs: What can help you be more efficient and avoid procrastination? Check out these top productivity blogs for extra motivation.
• The Best Productivity Hacks You Can Start in Under 2 Minutes: Find even more tips to help you be productive at work, for employees of all types, no matter your role.
• Tips For When You’re Bored At Work: Waiting for your meetings to start? Not sure why you’re wasting time? You can still increase productivity by following the suggestions in this post!
• Best To-Do List Apps: See the top to-do list apps that you should download right away to improve your work and personal efficiency.
• Top Collaboration Tools: Use these tools to effectively collaborate and communicate with your team to get stuff done. 
• Best Productivity Apps for Apple & Android: What if you could turn that powerful phone in your pocket for something more productive? This list of productivity apps will cut out friction and frustration from your everyday life.
• Best Task Management Apps: Check out this list for the top task management software to help monitor your tasks and projects for a small team or as an individual. From to-do lists to simple team collaboration, this list will have what you need.

Conclusion 

Boosting productivity isn’t rocket science.

Just follow the tips in this blog post to increase productivity and boost your performance across the board. Sometimes all it takes is a few tweaks to your lifestyle such as sleeping more or drinking more water to give you that boost you need! 

However, if you’re really serious about boosting productivity, consider signing up for ClickUp today. It has all the features you need to increase your productivity and breeze through your tasks.