Success is not something you get in one day. It requires getting things done consistently. We may plan our day, week, month, or even our life in the best way possible. But, we cannot expect success without the actual execution of those plans. If you want to level up your success you need to get things done and get them done consistently. No excuses for being busy or anything else should come your way of completing your planned task.

Here we are providing you with the ultimate guide to getting things done and leveling up your success.

Know Where You Are Lacking

You must know that there’s no one-size-fits-all type success formula. We are all different in our disposition. So, before you try to figure out a way of getting things done you need to understand your weaknesses. You can find plenty of tips and techniques to get things done. You might already have tried and tested many of them too. But, you can’t find the perfect solution until you know your exact problem.

A person may struggle to get things done due to:

• Procrastination
• Lack of Planning
• Over Planning
• Failing to keep track
• Failing to manage mounting workload
• Lack of clarity of vision
• Lack of inner drive to success, etc.

So you see there can be varied reasons behind a person’s failure to get things done. A person who fails due to a lack of planning will definitely need a different approach to getting things done than the person who wastes time and energy in over-planning. So, before you pick any tips for yourself sit and analyze yourself. Being aware of the problem brings us halfway to the solution.

Have an Accountability Partner

Once you find out the areas where you lack, you will start working on them. But, most of the time we start with full zeal and then get off-track. Do you know the biggest reason behind this? It is a lack of accountability. Whatever you choose to start doing for pushing yourself towards success, be accountable to someone. Search for a person around you who cares for your success and failure and make them your accountability partner. Your accountability partner should have the right to check your progress and hold you accountable for any lack of effort or missed goals.

Interestingly, every type of person can benefit from having an accountability partner. Obviously, the accountability partner will have slightly different responsibilities for different types of people. If you are a procrastinator, your accountability partner will need to ensure that you tick off every item on your to-do list without making excuses. An over-planner will need constant nudge from their accountability partner for focusing more on execution than planning. A person with a lack of clarity may sit and figure out things with their accountability partner. In a nutshell, we all need someone to walk with us on the path to success. We need someone who constantly holds us accountable for whatever we need to get things done and level up our success.

Be Tech-Friendly

Today is the time when we all need to do smart work rather than hard work. In today’s time, if you are not using technology to get things done more efficiently, you are making sure to push yourself on the path of failure. Today we have all sorts of web and mobile applications that can accelerate our speed to success. We just need to find out the right tool to help us achieve our goals. You need to sit down and brainstorm the areas of your work that can benefit from using one or the other technology and then start using them.

Some of the most common areas where technology can do the leg work for you include:

• Outsourcing
• Time Management
• Business and Project Management
• Social Media Management

With web and mobile applications available for all these tasks, you can transfer a significant amount of responsibilities from your shoulders to the technology. This will increase the speed and quality of work getting done and will allow you to move faster toward your goal. Many AI-based tools can also help you get things done more efficiently.

Do Not Forget to Review Your Plans Periodically

Planning is not something that can be done once and for all. You need to review your plans periodically, say weekly or monthly. We cannot just keep going without a sense of direction. The periodic review ensures that we know whether we are heading to.

Having a scheduled review session helps us to figure out whether our plan or to-do list is taking us toward our actual long-term goal. We also figure out whether our execution of the plan working fine for us. Without a proper review, we might end up burdening ourselves with hectic to-dos only to later find out that we have been working tirelessly in the wrong direction. If you want to keep yourself on track, reviewing your plan and its execution aka your action is a very important step.

Focus on One Thing at a Time

Multi-tasking is one of the worst choices you can make if you are trying to be productive. We have been told once and again that the human brain is not meant for multi-tasking. Too much brain energy is wasted in switching our focus from one thing to the other. So, you should always try and focus on one thing at a time. When we talk about focusing on one task at a time we do not only mean avoiding multi-tasking but also keeping ourselves away from distractions.

The biggest distractions for all of us today are the constant notifications we receive on our phones and other devices. If you don’t take charge of those notifications you will end up being distracted every now and then. When we are distracted, we cannot fully focus on the task at hand. This significantly hampers our productivity and the end result of all our efforts. While we are distracted we work at our sub-optimal level. Needless to say, this isn’t going to help us in leveling our success.

Look for the Time Stealers

Most of us do not fail to get things done because we aren’t doing the things we are meant to be doing. We fail because we fail to take hold of ‘time stealers’ in our daily lives. Time stealers are those tasks that do not add value to our day but we end up spending so much time on them. For some, the time stealer may be social media or any such thing that seems unnecessary at its face value itself. But, for some of us, the time stealer can be such tasks that are actually important but end up becoming time stealers because we spend more than the required time on them.

Planning your day, week, month and year are all important but it can be a time stealer when we start over-spending our time on just making plans. Reading about ways to get productive and the techniques of time management are all important but if you overspend time on reading them without actually executing the learning, you are wasting your time. We all have such time-stealers in our daily habits. You need to find your time stealer and nip it to make room for productive tasks.

Adopt Micro-Habits of Productivity

While talking about getting things done and leveling up our success, we tend to look for big solutions. In reality, micro-habits of productivity are the things that actually help us to achieve our goals. Making tiny adaptations in your routine can help you more in being productive than searching for a giant shift in your daily routine.

Some of the micro-habits of productivity that help us in getting things done faster and in a more efficient way include:

• Waking up a little early – when we start waking up a little early than usual, we get more time to be productive. Adding a small bit of time every day ultimately creates a big chunk of productive time for us. And, you might have read that most successful people are early risers.
• Tackle the toughest task first – An entire book of productivity has been written on this one simple habit of tackling the toughest task first. We all have the most abundant motivation in the morning which depletes every hour. Tackling the toughest task first, gets it done easily and also gives us a sense of accomplishment for the whole day.
• Create a system – When we have a clearly defined system we do not need to spend our mental energy every day deciding what to do first and what next. A system allows a seamless flow of tasks ultimately making our days more productive.
• Batch similar tasks together – Batching similar tasks together is again a micro-habit that helps boost productivity. When we batch our similar tasks together we are able to get them done more easily without having to switch our attention from one task to the other.
• Prioritize your task and say no to unimportant things – Setting up task priority is important so that the most important tasks get done on a priority basis. When you are setting up priority you will need to learn the skill of saying no as well. When you can’t say no to somebody you end up ruining your priority list. This habit won’t let you get things done productively ever.

There are many more such tiny habits that can increase your productivity multi-fold. Keep on adding these micro-habits one at a time and you’ll find yourself to be a much more productive person.  

Create a Balance in Your Life

Last but not least; create a balance between getting things done and enjoying your life. Typically, when we start focusing on getting things done we tend to over-burn ourselves. Remember, the journey toward success in life is a marathon rather than a sprint. We cannot keep on doing things without taking a rest for unwinding our minds. You need to remember that it is beyond human capacity to stay productive in every waking hour of the day. When we try to stuff our days with too much work and no proper break and rest time we are making sure that we do not go very far.

If you want to keep going on and on achieving several milestones to your success you must create a balance in your life. You should have dedicated time for rest and entertainment as you have for your tasks and future planning.

Conclusion

Success requires us to get things done consistently. We can’t expect to level up our success by being productive one day and unproductive the other day. Consistency is really very important when we want to achieve something significant. And to maintain the consistency we need to build one productive habit over the other. We can’t overhaul our entire routine and expect to stick to it over a long period of time.

Start with just one point and then gradually build other habits over it. In addition to building your own habit, you need to start delegating your tasks to a person or a technology. Do not try to walk alone on the long path to success. It will only make the journey tougher.

Hope this write-up helps you in planning your personalized guide to getting things done and leveling up your success.  

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