18 ideas to punch up productivity

Productivity is your very own renewable power source. But it takes strategy, experimentation and fresh tactics to stay fueled and motivated.

Here are 18 ideas to try:

1. Choose your own task prioritization method.

I’ve learned a lot from former Dwight D. Eisenhower and the popular Eisenhower Matrix.

Image via Luxafor

Creating a visual hierarchy of this nature can help you rank tasks in order of priority, but there are plenty of other options out there, such as:

“Be sure to watch out for ‘decibel prioritization,’ in which the loudest voice heard gets top priority, and ‘threat prioritization,’ in which stakeholders holding the most political power always get what they demand,” writes Karl Wiegers in a Medium post. “These traps can skew the process away from addressing your true business objectives.”

“The simplest method is for a group of stakeholders to work down a list of requirements and decide for each if it’s in or it’s out,” states Wiegers. Using the project’s business objectives as a guide, pare down each task to the absolute minimum required for the first release.