17 Valuable Productivity tips of successful women

Productivity can’t be mastered in a day but there are so many successful women who effortlessly manage their personal and professional space.

As women, we have ridiculously long task-lists of household chores, visiting the doctor, managing kids, career goals!

It’s tricky trying to maintain a work-life balance and not getting overwhelmed with life.

But there are certain habits and productivity tips successful women follow to function better.

This post aims to discuss 17 of these tips and motivate you to get your priorities right

Productivity tips successful women follow

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1. Successful Women Prioritize tasks

Successful women prioritize their to-do list and start with the most urgent task.

Often the most urgent task gets ignored due to a devil called procrastination.

We either forget because we scared to do a task or we are just plain lazy.

Prioritizing tasks puts your focus on things that benefit you in the long run.

Start with a task that seems tough to tackle. Chances are, it is actually the most urgent task in your to-do list.

When you are writing the task list use the Eisenhower Matrix to distribute your task into four distinct categories:

A. Important and urgent –these are your top most priority tasks to be done ASAP

B. Important but not urgent – These tasks can be attended later

C. Not important but urgent – delegate these tasks, if possible

D. Not important and not urgent – you delegate these or skip them entirely.

2. Successful women work in a time-bound manner

Successful women set deadlines for their tasks.

It is important you keep a deadline when you start a task chore.

Otherwise you won’t be serious about completing it.

Setting deadlines brings a sense of urgency and seriousness in your attitude about the task.

There are two ways you can do this:

a) Set a timer

I set a timer for 15-20 minutes for tackling daily chores like making my bed or dusting. These are tasks I mostly procrastinate on.

So when set it I try to finish my tasks before the timer goes off.

But does it affect the quality of my work?

Never because I am so super focused on the task I automatically work faster. So set a timer for tasks you detest.

b) Maintain a time-log

A time log is really simple method of tracking your time for daily activities.

This will give a rough idea on tasks which consume your maximum time.

Related Post: 10 time-management tips for entrepreneurs

3. Successful women Identify Time-wasters

According to a research office-meetings and answering mails are considered as top time-wasting tasks.

Do note how much time you are dedicating to these two activities.

Set a time-limit and have a fixed time when you conduct these activities.

When you are in a meeting work on your communication skills to convey your point in a clear manner without beating around the bush.

If it’s possible delegate your mail sorting and answering to an assistant.

4. Successful women maintain a routine

It is said success depends on your daily routine.

Women who are successful are meticulous planners who follow their morning and night routines religiously.

A morning routine is important because it gives a definite direction to your day.

Similarly a night and an evening routine is equally important to prepare for the next day, unwind and make sometime for yourself.

5. They understand the effectiveness of batching

Successful women understand that batching is a life-saver; it gives you a flow to your work.

For the uninitiated, batching means grouping similar tasks and completing them within a time-limit.

For example your morning household chores like making breakfast, preparing lunch, cleaning and laundry can be grouped together.

You can give yourself a time-limit to complete these tasks before moving to next set of things.

My free resource library has a time-blocking sheet you can easy use to batch tasks for the entire week.

Along with this you can grab the free weekly and monthly planners to organize your life better.

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6. Successful women create and control their Calendar

When you plan your calendar it reflects discipline on your part to chase goals.

If you wake up each day wandering “what exactly should I do today” it shows your lack of vision.

There are 2 ways you can make to create your personal schedule with calendar.

a) Weekly Planning and Review

Every weekend like on Sundays set aside 10-15 minutes to make a weekly task list for each day of the week and schedule everything into your calendar.

Similarly make it a habit to evaluate your weekly performance and check how you fared as compared to previous week.

b) Monthly and Annual Goals- Set & Evaluate

If you want your business to be successful monthly and annual targets are must.

Plan your entire calendar for the next year as soon as December hits.

Divide the entire year into four quarters and set your targets.

Those targets can be further broken down into monthly, weekly and daily goals.

7. Successful women focus on Deep work

It’s important to work without any distractions for sometime every day.

Consider these important questions

How long is your attention span?

What distracts you most is it your phone or the internet browser in your PC?

For example, after some trial and error, I found I work best between mid-mornings and afternoon.

I can work at a stretch for say around 2 hours without breaks.

Now this may not seem much but I am someone who has moderate ADHD so 2 hours at a stretch, considering how fragile my attention span can be, is a pretty decent for me.

Since I am easily distracted with social media, when working I keep my phone away on silent mode.

The key to doing deep work is determining your attention span and fixing your distractions.

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8. Successful Women Set SMART Goals

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely.

SMART goal-setting technique helps to nail down your goals to specific points and make it more achievable.

9. Successful women aren’t busy but productive

You may do 100 things yet at the end of the day you may have actually accomplished nothing.

But when you are productive you know exactly on what to focus on.

Follow the  Pareto Principle which says 20% of your efforts bring 80% of the results.

For example, after an evaluation you found that you can increase your profits by double if you sell a particular product in 4 flea markets of your city.

Here you are focusing all your efforts in a particular direction to yield maximum profit.

10. Successful women limit their daily task list

Understand your limitations when it comes to daily tasks.

Instead of blocking your daily schedules with back to back things focus on doing maximum 3 things in a day.

One of the better and proven ways to manage tasks is to use the Pomodoro Technique where you divide your work into small intervals of 25 minutes with a rest period of 5 minutes.

11. Visualise the end goal

Most productive and successful people use the visualization technique where they see their end-goal.

The idea behind this is when you start something you obviously have an end vision in mind.

Suppose if you have a start-up you obviously have some goals for your business in the next five years.

Having a vision gives you a framework to proceed and the necessary momentum to begin.

12. They have learned the art of saying no

Women who are successful understand a simple fact that they can’t make everyone happy.

This means taking some tough calls as and when required; as well as setting some personal boundaries.

Yes, it may offend some but in the long-run it will save your sanity.

13. Successful women work clutter-free

Most successful women keep work and personal space clutter-free and organized. 

Believe it or not but cleanliness actually improves your productivity. A clean environment helps you to concentrate and prepares your mind for the day.

It is a better way to function and definitely a time-saver because you know exactly where everything is.

14. They Automate work

There are so many decisions we have to make every day, like what to eat, what to wear etc, if some things from our daily schedule can be automated it will reduce a lot of mental load.

Like your bill payments can be automated. You can organize your work wardrobe and plan your attire for your workdays.

The idea here is to conserve your energy by limiting your everyday decision-making.

15. They fix accountability

Successful women have developed a mindset where they take accountability for their action and full responsibility in completing tasks or working towards goals.

16. They Delegate tasks

Successful women understand that to run a business one needs dedication, determination and delegation.

Sometimes it’s impossible to do everything alone so allocating them to the right person is necessary.

Like administrative work can be given delegated or outsourced to someone with relevant experience.

Even doing household chores you can always share the load with your spouse/partner and children.

This will help them to be more responsible.

17. Maintain a personal-work life balance

Taking breaks or unwinding is so essential to working efficiently.

In your daily routine fix a time when you unwinding for the day like spending time with family, reading a book or listening to music.

This is also important to avoid stress and burnout.

Final Thoughts

To sum it up, most successful women follow the golden rule of consistency while prioritizing their tasks and striving to maintain a work life balance.

If you have been reading this far I thank you for your patience and hope you found this write-up useful.

Before leaving please visit my free resource library it is full of planners and ebooks to help you live a more organised life.

Do check it out you won’t be disappointed 🙂