There are so many time management strategies and productivity tips that exist in the world. Yet, many people who aren’t so great at time management get frustrated because these strategies don’t seem as realistic from a beginner perspective. Thankfully, there are a lot of successful people that exist who haven’t always found time management to be their strong suit. These are some of the best people to learn from because they GET it. My good friend and blog mentor, Paul Scrivens, has been an amazing resource for time management. He runs over 13 blogs and has a successful blog course “Billionaire Blog Club”, which has rapidly grown in popularity amongst new bloggers. He made over $70,000 in February 2018 alone! Holy cow, right? Today Paul is here to share some stellar solutions that can help anybody improve their productivity. Obviously, with his results, it works.

First, these tips don’t only apply to bloggers that make over 6 figures a year. These tips don’t even have to apply to bloggers! I just used that in the title to catch your eye.

In fact, these tips are meant for anyone that just wants more time to do what they want and that’s the key to understanding any type of productivity.

If you really want something then that usually means you need to sacrifice something else and that’s where people get stuck because in life we are always told to do what we love.

However, I don’t like half of the things I need to do to stay productive but I do enjoy their outcome. So if you can remember that you don’t need to fall in love with every action that you take to be productive then things become a lot easier.

Before we dive into the tips, let’s explore why I needed to discover these things in the first place.

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My Journey to Freedom

I learned rather quickly that I didn’t want to work for other people. I like my freedom and being able to do what I want so I figured if I could make money on my own then nobody could tell me what to do.

So I started my own business and I was successful in the beginning because of luck. I didn’t know it was luck until I tried to replicate it.

It didn’t work out.

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.

Neither did the next venture or the venture after that.

It wasn’t because I had crappy ideas. It was because I lacked execution. I knew exactly what needed to be done but I just never got it done. This eventually led me to get another job working for someone else (booooo). I did that for about 3 years before I told myself that it was time to venture out on my own again but I needed to do things differently.

I couldn’t afford to spend days doing all of the fun things that I wanted or pretending that I would get stuff done tomorrow.

READ: Time Management Tips for The Type B Personality

Thus, I needed to understand what makes productive people, well, productive.

This required more than just reading books on productivity tips. It meant experimenting and understanding what was causing me to lose productivity throughout the day.

I think everyone needs to go through this because there are so many different productivity tips, systems and philosophies out there.  It’s important to remember that not one of them is one size fits all.

Nowadays I make enough money that when I want to take a day off I really can do whatever I want but when it’s time for work I have a system in place that helps me get things done.

Because you came here for the tips I guess it’s time to dive right in.

10 Productivity Tips from a Six Figure Blogger

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.

Some of these tips are hard to share for two reasons:

  1. I’m surprised it took me so long to realize them because they are all pretty much common sense
  2. A lot of you won’t like some of these tips at all and you want to fight the urge to prove me wrong

I don’t care if you want to prove me wrong. Remember there isn’t a one size fits all technique to productivity. We are all dealing with the same constraint, a 24-hour day, and how we handle that constraint can differ from each individual.

1. Sacrifice Time to Increase Time

This might be the hardest for people because nobody wants to sacrifice anything. You watch TV because you like TV and getting rid of it means getting rid of something you like.

However, you only have 24 hours in a day. You can’t expand that and make more. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Instead, you have to look at your daily routine and see what things you can sacrifice. For me, it was browsing sites on the Internet. I get thrown into rabbit holes pretty easily when browsing the web and before I knew, 3 hours have passed.

So now, I limit my Internet browsing consumption to specific times of the day. I’ve sacrificed my cat nap video watching time for more productive time.

For a lot of people just giving up TV or watching less of it gives them more time to do the things that will provide them with more freedom.

2. Have a Plan of Action

I hate plans. Seriously, I can’t stand them. My Mom used to always have plans laid out to the minute for our family vacations and I hated that.

However, plans are what you need if you want to be productive.

When I started working for myself I loved the freedom of doing whatever I wanted when I wanted but what I found is that I didn’t get much done at all.

If the plan was to write 10 blog posts by the end of the week (feasible) then I would find myself with 1 blog post on Friday.

What happened?!

I didn’t have a plan of action.

What I’ve learned over time is that plans don’t limit what you can do but they enhance things a lot more because they give you a structure that you can follow. I don’t think you need to plan every hour of your day, but if you’re the type that likes to set goals then you need a plan of action for taking down those goals.

I planned on making a million dollars in 18 months and the only way that I’m getting close to that goal is with a plan of action.

3. Track Your Time Initially

 

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.

This is starting to sound like a job, right?

Well, you’d be surprised at how much time it takes you to do a task that you assumed wouldn’t take you long at all. It’s hard to have deadlines, plans, or goals if you don’t understand the time it takes for you to do things.

Not to mention, if you don’t understand where your time is going, it’s going to make applying any of these productivity tips seem nearly impossible.

The only reason I can set a goal for 10 blog posts by the end of the week is that I know how long it takes me (on average) to write a blog post.

I wouldn’t know that unless I tracked my time.

After a while, you begin to know how long it takes you to do certain things so you might not need to track your time as meticulously.

But at the beginning, track your time so you can see where it’s going. Does it really take you 45 mins or two hours to get ready for work in the morning?

Do you need 15 minutes or 45 minutes to prepare dinner every night?

Understanding where your time is going helps you understand where you can make changes and sacrifices.

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.Bullet journals are an easy way to track the time you spend in your day!
Check out this time tracker from my June 2018 ‘Plan with Me’!

This is extremely boring but really helpful. You can set up a spread in your bullet journal or use an app on your phone to do this.

You’ll be amazed where your time goes.

4. Set Big Ass Goals

I like to set big goals. Goals so big that it will a Herculean effort to achieve them. I do this because it always gives me something bigger to aim for.

A big reason why people aren’t productive is that they lack motivation. You can’t just be productive for productivity’s sake. However, if you have a big ass goal then you always have something to strive for.

This big ass goal can be the reason you get out of bed. This big ass goal can be the reason you do the boring things (time tracking).

Set one big ass goal for yourself that you want to achieve and write it down.

READ: How to Set Up Long-Term Goals in Your Bullet Journal

5. Set Small Ass Goals

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.

Now that you have a big ass goal, you will need small ass goals that lead up to it. You can call these milestones if you want.

These milestones are in place so you understand what you need to accomplish today, tomorrow, this week and this month.

You can’t just say you want to lose 100 lbs (your big ass goal) and be done with it because if you aren’t hitting that goal in a week it can seem like an impossible reach.

However, if you know that you need to lose 1 pound in the next two days then you have something smaller that you can attain. That 1 pound is going to lead to the next 99.

When I set up the big ass goal of making one million dollars in 18 months, I didn’t tell myself that I needed to make $55,555 each month because I wasn’t starting at that level.

Instead, my first goal was to get to $5,000 a month, and then $10,000 and so on. The more I understood what it took to achieve the smaller goals, the easier it was for me to see how to achieve the big ass goal.

Most big goals are just a ton of small goals combined. Small ass goals make for great bullet journal spreads.

6. Eat Right

When it comes to productivity tips, rarely is diet brought up. However, my productivity levels completely changed when I switched over to the ketogenic diet.

Now, I’m not saying you should switch to keto. I’m just making you aware that what you put in your body has as much to do with your productivity levels as anything else.

What if you could go a day without feeling tired or groggy? What if you never had to suffer through brain fog?

These are the questions I asked myself when I started to dive into how nutrition affects my productivity levels.

Maybe that donut wasn’t the best way to start the day.

7. Get Your Sleep

I’m terrible at this because I love working late nights. The world is quiet so I feel like I can get more done.

The problem is I have to wake up early every morning since I have 4 dogs and a kid. Sleeping in really isn’t an option so the reason why I plan things out now is that I know I need to get 6-8 hours of sleep every night if I want to be productive the next day.

Investing in a quality mattress and pillow can also go a long way in helping you get the sleep that you need.

8. Cut Interruptions

You don’t need to check every single email as soon as it arrives. You don’t need to respond to every text notification, either.

When you are productive it usually means you’re in a nice flow. If that flow gets broken then it takes a bit of time to get back up to the right level.

This is a huge productivity pitfall so take a stance and decide what situations will cause you to break out of your zen of productivity.

9. Build Habits/Routines

Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.

If you ever start to work for yourself it’s easy to fall into a groove where you don’t have a routine.

That’s bad news.

You need a routine to be productive. I can’t stress this enough.

Good habits form a good life so find the good habits and make an effort to be consistent with them.

Trash the bad ones.

10. Take Time Not Being Productive

This one is probably the most important to me because when I read all of the gurus and how they always seem to be productive 24/7 I get a bit discouraged because I just can’t maintain those levels.

What I’ve found is that I need time to unwind or do nothing at all. I need time to be silly and not have a care in the world. Give me all the productivity tips in the world. But if I don’t get a chance to kick back, I’m less productive than ever.

When I’m done with these moments it’s pretty easy to get back into the groove because I know I’m not going to be stuck in some robotic productivity routine for the rest of my life.

You’re trying to be productive so you can have more time for yourself. Unfortunately, that’s useless if you don’t take time for yourself.

Find Your Productivity

As I said before, all of these productivity tips might not apply to you. You might only like one of them while others might like all of them.

It’s up to you to find your productivity groove and that only happens with experimentation and taking a look at what is holding you back.

Always take the time to understand what is getting in your way from getting more done and then figuring out how you can prevent those things from happening.

It’s all one big science experiment so don’t think you’ll nail everything on the first go.

About Paul:

Paul Scrivens is a successful blogger and course creator of the newly popular blogging course Billionaire Blog Club. His unique viewpoints for blogging and business have helped many of his students become successful bloggers! Because of his success, he is able to enjoy his time with his family and various pets. You can find him at some of his websites below:

Billionaire Blog Club – Signature Course

Obstacle.co – How to Start a Blog Website

KetoDash – Website/membership site on the Keto Diet.

Hey! It’s Rachel again really quick. Paul is amazing and I am so grateful to have him as a mentor and good friend. If you want to learn how to start a blog, he’s the best I’ve come across and I highly recommend you use his services. If you’d like to learn more about my experience with Billionaire Blog Club, please read the review here!

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Ten productivity tips from a six figure blogger. Learn these life changing time management tips that will help you organize your life and become successful. Improve your productivity by using a planner, taking care of yourself, and other easy tips to help you be productive. Time management for entrepreneurs, students, moms, and bloggers.