Something I’ve grown to love over the years is learning how to become more productive. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t perfected it yet and I’m still learning but it’s an art I want to master.
In recent weeks I’ve noticed a lot of people have opted into an offer that I haven’t promoted in sometime and that’s to get the ToDoist Pro offer. That’s the offer I have where you get ToDoist Pro for free for 2 months.
Since I started Russtek, I’ve tried many different ways and many different planners from dollar store planners, Brendon Burchard’s High Performance planner, Alex Charfen’s Momentum Planner to now, my Rocketbook Panda Planner
Using these I’ve tried to become more productive and get more done in less time with some work and some other tools. I wanted to talk about what works for me and hopefully that helps you and finding ways to become more productive yourself.
The first thing I do is I start my week on Sunday by planning out my entire week. To do that I use my Rocketbook Planner more specifically the Panda Planner.
Like I said before, I’ve tried many Planters over the years, and the Rocketbook planners are hands-down the best and the reason I think they are the best is they tie in a little bit of everything from all the other planners.
To top it off, they are reusable so I don’t have to buy a new planner every month or every three months depending on how big the planner is. All you have to do is use the app to scan your page and it’ll automatically upload to the destination you choose like Google Drive, Google Photos, EverNote, OnDrive and many more.
To start out my week I use my Panda Planner to First plot out the entire week, I plot all of my meetings all of my calls in the weekly section as well as goals that I want a hit and I plan the different areas of my life, from my personal life to Family Life, relationships and work. With that section I write down what I plan on doing that week for each area.
From there I do things daily every morning. To start my morning I always wake up early….I’ve been slacking on the 5am club….but still get up at 6am to read. After that and after getting ready, the first thing I do is get to my desk, with a coffee of course and plan my day.
I start by writing down three things I’m grateful for, three things that I’m excited about and the main tasks from my ToDoist. From there I take the top three tasks and write those above my list.
Why do I write out my To Do List when I use the ToDoist app?
We’ll get into the to-do list app very soon but one of the things that many entrepreneur coaches have talked about is physically writing down your to-do list with pen and paper. This puts your day front and center in your mind.
I use the ToDoist app to keep things organized but when it comes to staying productive I write my major tasks so I can break them down to the top three using the “Eat that Frog†method.
The reason I break tasks down into the top three is from the book Eat that Frog. The main premise behind the strategy is you take the three largest and hardest tasks that you have that day and you get them done first. Those are your “Frogsâ€.
After I complete the three biggest and hardest tasks, each task from there on out gets easier as I go down the list. Once I’m done with those 3 tasks, I’ll get the next 3 the next 3 until I’m done for the day.
One of the other tools I use is a whiteboard I have in my office and with that, I also plan out my week with the most important calls/meetings and important tasks/goals for the week.
What this does is this helps me visualize my week every time I walk by the office or look back. With the whiteboard, I always know exactly what’s going to happen and what I have coming out so I never miss a meeting, call or an appointment.
Lastly, every other month I take two weeks and I do a Time Study. The reason I do a Time Study is this helps me adjust my time blocks in Google Calendar and helps me adjust my recurring tasks in my ToDoist app, as well it shows me where I’m spending most of my time.
Using a Time study, I can see where I have free time, where I’m spending time working and where I’m wasting time. Using the Time Study, I can adjust my day and plan accordingly so I can get more done in less time.
If all of this sounds good and if it’s something you think you could use to make yourself more productive, I want to give you two of the biggest things that have helped me.
First I want to give you the Time Study I use, absolutely free. Secondly, I want to give you two months of ToDoist Pro absolutely free.
Don’t get me wrong, ToDoist is a free app but like most apps. The pro version has a lot more to offer and personally, I will say it’s hands-down the best app and best tool I have ever used. I’ve been using it for 4 or 5 years now and it’s been a game changer.
If these tools are something you want, all you have to do is click the button below!