How to be more productive with a full-time job?

Often people DM me on Linkedln, asking me how do I be so productive all the time especially when it comes to working on personal projects and working towards reaching one’s goal.

Ok,

Let me tell you my little secret.

This has not always been the case. I would also struggle to make the most out of my time especially when you have a full-time job. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms of how your day is going to be. The earlier me would be too hasty to work on anything and everything that I came across which would add value to my career. I wanted to do it all. Silly me 🙃 And as a result, I had too many things going on in progress but nothing would result in completion. Nothing would eventually result in the final outcome as it’s supposed to be. Everything would be left unfinished. And that would make me feel very unproductive and disappointed in myself 😔

Now, you must be wondering, what am I doing now which changed the things for me!

What I do now is something very simple yet very impactful. Now, I only have 1 to 2 items in work in progress (WIP). If I find something exciting that I want to work on or any certification that I have to do. It just gets added to my backlog of items. Obviously, the priority of items in backlog keeps changing from time to time, but it doesn’t affect my work in progress much. I use monday.com to keep track of my personal projects and goals. This has helped me be more organised and pragmatic about the tasks at hand and their timelines. I set up a target date for each backlog item and track my progress 💯 I have always used Azure DevOps in my office for professional projects but using something similar for my personal goals was a game-changer for me.

I feel happy and proud of myself when I see tasks in my backlog items turn green indicating completion 😬 I no more feel unproductive when something is not moving to completion. I mention the reason as in why I am stuck at that particular task and take action to resolve it ASAP.

After a month, when I glance through my monday.com dashboard, I know what I have worked on each day. It gives me a clear picture of how I have utilised my time over the month. That makes me feel good and motivates me to keep working hard and follow my dreams.

Cheers!

To read more from Komal visit her personal blog here.