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Next Steps

As I write this newsletter, I am sitting on my balcony with a hot cappuccino, and nobody around. I haven’t checked my phone once in the past 30 minutes, and I didn’t open any social media on my laptop.There’s only me, my cappuccino, the sound of a few cars passing by, and many birds singing aloud. This is my quiet hour. And all of us should have at least one a day.

2 — Quiet Hour (1)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Identify categories of similar tasks each day.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Schedule specific blocks to complete them together.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Leave safe time boundaries if a group of activities takes longer so you don’t have to return to it later.</li></ul>

How to Start

We all journaled at least once in our lives. And we all tried time tracking. But have you ever tried time journaling?Journaling helps you understand yourself better. It allows you to elaborate on what happened during the day and how you reacted. And it can become a powerful self-help tool.

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<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Plan and schedule your breaks each day.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Don’t feel guilty — it’s only strategic rest.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Spend your leisure time however you wish.</li></ul>

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Plan your quiet hour first thing in the morning.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Bring a distraction reliever (in my case, the cappuccino I sip every time I want to pick up my phone).</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Pick one task (it’s better if it’s just one to avoid context switching).</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Take your time to reach focus. Don’t expect it right away.</li></ul>

In this article, I collected seven uncommon hacks that productive people swear by. They are effective. They are smart. They are practical. And they will help you reclaim your time, enhance your focus, and boost your daily achievements without adding stress or complexity.

Seven Uncommon Hacks for Productive People

You now have a few new productivity tips to experiment with. If you are tired of the old but gold consistency rule — try something new. Refresh your routine with different takes on productivity and see how it goes.If it works, great for you. You found a way to become more productive for some time.If it doesn’t work, you will have learned something new. That’s a win, too.But you won’t escape this newsletter without a challenge.

The Challenge of The Week

Schedule breaks and leisure time to maintain productivity instead of recovering from it. Many entrepreneurs often share their practice of scheduling downtime. And if you want to become more productive, you should follow their lead.

7 — Scheduled Leisure (2)

<a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/p/time-management-fundamentals">Time tracking</a>, on the other hand, is a powerful productivity tool. It helps you understand how much time a task will take and how to schedule it better in the future.But what’s time journaling?Track your daily tasks to identify hidden time wasters — that’s time journaling.

5 — Time Journaling (2)

Generic productivity advice suggests you aim for 3-4 hours of deep work in the morning and a little less in the afternoon. But that’s not a necessity — it’s a goal.Start smaller. Set aside one distraction-free hour for deep, uninterrupted work. That single hour will stretch up until you achieve that deep focus. But start small.

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<ul><li>Keep a simple log where you track all your activities of the day.</li><li>At the end of each week, analyze that data.</li><li>Find repetitive tasks that steal your time and decide what to do about them.</li></ul>

You can minimize context switching by grouping similar tasks. For example, you could schedule an hour a day to answer all emails. You could group all your administrative tasks. Or you could schedule all your calls one after another.

3 — Task Bundling (2)

I know you’re tired of the same old productivity tips.Consistency works, sure. We all understand that. But isn’t there any other tip you could try to boost your productivity?Working hard and waking up earlier are good contenders for the most shared advice. But they often leave you feeling overwhelmed rather than empowered. Yet, real productivity is about building good strategies, not exhausting yourself.

Consistency Works, But What Else?

You're reading an excerpt from <a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/">The Challenge</a> — a weekly newsletter dedicated to self-improvement, goal-setting, habits, time management, and health tips.Every week, you'll receive:A life-enhancing challengeA custom infographic to track your progress<a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/subscribe">Join 3800+ driven individuals </a>and take your first challenge.

The Challenge

Deadlines should help you plan your work in daily tasks. But most times, you won’t plan anything at all. On the contrary, you will ignore the deadline until it’s too late and then work over hours to hit it.That’s a great example of feeling overwhelmed, and generic productivity advice suggests you should plan your work first. Great! But how?

1 — Reverse Scheduling (1)

This year, my manager introduced a new way of tracking yearly objectives in our team. So, I will borrow his technique. For each of us, he started with the final objective and a deadline, the end of the year. Then, he broke that goal into four quarterly sub-goals. Each of those goals had three tasks, one for each month. This way, we could know if we were ahead, behind, or working at the right pace to hit our goal (and get the extra money).That’s what reverse scheduling is all about.

1 — Reverse Scheduling (2)

Projects around the world use task boards every day and succeed with them. They are invaluable when managing many people, that’s true. But even having a visual task board for better visibility and focus can be a game-changer.I am a big fan of visual boards. If you are a long-time reader of The Challenge, you know that. I build many tools for visual tracking, from free infographics to premium Notion templates (upgrade your subscription to get them) . Visual boards are my way of being productive — and they can help you, too.

6 — Visual Task Boards

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Make a list of five small rewards you may get during your day.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Match them with a regular task.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Prioritize active rewards like networking to passive ones like snacks.</li></ul>

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Take your next big goal. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Write its deadline. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Map out milestones backward. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Split those milestones into tasks. </li></ul>Split those tasks into subtasks if it's a long-term goal. From my experience, weekly subtasks work better because they give you a sense of progression but also enough freedom to work whenever you have time.Here’s an <a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/p/master-time-management">entire article</a> talking about milestones splitting with an infographic to track it.

Some time ago, I shared my <a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/p/unplug-and-reconnect-the-24-hour">24-Hour Do Nothing Challenge</a>. It was a bit extreme, I know. Yet, for some people, taking time for themselves became a necessity.You don’t want to get there. So, let’s start with something simpler. Let’s prevent needing a full day of doing nothing to recover from long nights without sleep.

7 — Scheduled Leisure (1)

Many people love to work from home these days. But working in the office has become a pleasure for me in the last few months. And I think most of this pleasure comes from the micro rewards I get there.When I’m at home, I rarely take some time for myself. And when I do, I spend it on social media or watching dumb stuff online. But working from the office, I take a break every two hours — it became a habit. I speak with people, laugh, and make jokes with them. And those bursts of networking help me continue.

4 — Micro Rewards

Choose three hacks to try this week. Schedule and commit to them daily. Observe the immediate impact on your productivity and peace of mind.Which productivity hack will you put into action first?🚀 Let me know in the comments or reply to this email![DOWNLOAD THE FREE INFOGRAPHIC <a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/p/master-your-day-7-little-known-hacks">HERE</a>]

Context-switching is a creepy enemy. It slips in behind our tasks, splits them, and takes advantage of our vulnerable moments to distract us.Many studies show that <a href="https://asana.com/resources/context-switching">context switching can kill your productivity</a>. But what if you avoid it instead of managing it?

3 — Task Bundling (1)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Buy a simple whiteboard to design your custom visual board.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Outline your weekly tasks in one corner, then split them into subtasks.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Fill the board with the subtasks and move them from Todo to In Progress to Completed.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Check out my <a href="https://cosmopolitanmindset.substack.com/subscribe">Productivity Mastery Notion templates</a>. They will save you a lot of time.</li></ul>

Discover uncommon productivity hacks to transform your routine and achieve more every single day.

3 — Task Bundling (1)

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Context Switching

Stop Using Time As A Productivity Measure