# Productivity tips from personal experience

> Ten things that measurably changed my working day, from waking early to time-limiting WhatsApp, with the tools and the research behind each one.

- Author: Rajesh Namase
- Published: 2015-08-26
- Category: Time
- Canonical: https://namase.com/journal/productivity-tips-experience

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Productivity Tips (Personal Experience)

1) Start waking up early in the morning.  If you have this question "How can I make a habit of getting up early in the morning?" then check out this link: http://qr.ae/RCkdSn

If you think that you are more productive at night, then go ahead and read this research paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/

You are less productive at night than you are in the morning!

2) Don't open Facebook, WhatsApp or any other distractive sites in your first hour of work.

If you think, time is money, then you should start planning how you spend it.

3) Create a to-do list of tasks and try complete them within a particular time. We use the  "Asana" app (Thanks Amar Ryder for sharing such a great app) for team management and for creating to-do lists.

4) While completing the task, consider all other things as distractions. Human brains are not optimized for multi-tasking. Nevertheless, you can take small breaks (say 3-4 minutes break) in between.

5) Before going to sleep, make sure that you have completed all the tasks as per the plan.

6) Get an early night or otherwise it  will not be possible to wake up in the morning. 7-8 hours sleep is a must. Do not compromise with your sleeping hours.

"I sleep 8 hours just about every night.  When I can, I sleep more.  I believe in sleep.  I think a big mistake that young people make when they are eager to be successful is sleep deprivation. Makes you stupid." - Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Founder)

7) Many people have a habit of opening Gmail and WhatsApp in one of browser tabs and this distracts them. I prefer checking emails and WhatsApp messages at a fixed interval of time.

8) Use QualityTime Android App (Thanks to Arun Prabhudesai for sharing this app), and create alerts. For example. if you create an alert for WhatsApp for a maximum of half an hour a day then after using WhatsApp for half an hour, it'll show you an alert. Use the Greenify app to hibernate apps like WhatsApp.

9) Use RescueTime extension or desktop software, more details: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1093546780696671&set=a.154048124646546.48091.100001240781985&type=1

10) Last but not least, discuss with like minded people.

Don't forget to share your experiences in comments below.