Five Tips to Get Organized and Increase Productivity

Sometimes it may not seem like there are enough hours in the day, but if you take the steps to preplan and organize yourself at work and at home, that thought may change.

That’s according to Audrey Thomas, also known as Organized Aubrey, an author and productivity expert who spoke at Signature Travel Network’s annual conference in Las Vegas last week.

Here are some of the tips that Thomas shared that will help you stay organized and keep stress levels low.

1. Get a good night’s sleep
It may be a cliché, but preparing to have a productive day starts the night before.

“We need seven to eight hours of sleep per night,” Thomas said. “We are a sleep-deprived nation.”

According to a 2013 Gallup Study (the last year Gallup published a sleep study), the average American slept only 6.8 hours a day — and that number may have gotten even worse over the past few years.

“We are not getting enough sleep, and a lot of it has to do with cell phones,” Thomas said.

There are apps that will turn off the bright blue lights, which mimics the brightness of the sun, that cell phones emit. However, the best way to combat cell phone-related sleep deprivation is to turn off the phone hours before laying down to sleep.

2. Hydrate and stretch
“I’m terrible at drinking water, I always have been,” Thomas said.

According to the Mayo Clinic, men should be drinking 13 cups a day on average, while women should be drinking nine. While that may seem like a daunting number, leaving water on the bedside table and drinking it the second you wake up will help.

“Your body is that thirsty and hydrating is so important for your brain, your muscles, and your body tissues,” Thomas said.

Just 10 minutes a day of stretching also helps to warm your body up in the morning, and making that part of your routine might motivate you to take daily exercise a step further, whether that means hitting the treadmill or taking a yoga class.

3. Be a decision-maker
Look at every single email entering your inbox as a decision waiting to be made. With the amount of emails coming in, it seems like a lot of decisions, but it’s not if you learn how to make good decisions, Thomas said.

A part of doing that is decluttering your mailbox, something Thomas said will produce “delayed decisions.”

There’s also a ton of tools in Outlook that are designed to help with organization. For instance, you can make an appointment in Outlook’s calendar simply by dragging an email onto the calendar icon. You can also add an email to your address book by doing the same — dragging the email onto the address book icon.

Outlook also has a color-coding system in calendars that can be accessed by going to Settings and then Conditional Formatting. The tool allows automatic categorization by keywords that fit the description. For instance, all of Thomas’s green blocks in her calendar represent a personal appointment.

4. Minimize disruptions
Just ten minutes a day of being distracted at work will lead to 43 hours a year of wasted time — almost a week’s vacation.
“We have our cell phones, we have texting, we have apps that are dinging us and giving us all kinds of updates,” Thomas said. “A lot of those interruptions are within our control.

To start, turn off notifications on apps and unimportant email accounts that ding you during the day and divert you from what you’re working on. According to Thomas, over 70 percent of the notifications coming at us get a response within six seconds, no matter how meaningful they are.

5. Unplug daily
It’s hard to turn off, especially with how easy it is to check work email. But you should think about your work like words on a page, Thomas said.

“What do you think reading a book would be like if there was no margin on the page? Solid characters from end to page – the reason publishers put margins on a page is so our brains can interpret what we’re reading,” she said.

When your margin is low, your stress level goes up, and both your personal and work life are negatively impacted.

To help with that, Thomas recommends going unplugged for one hour a day, “I try to imagine what life would be like without any electricity, she said. She also recommends sharing one meal a day with other people, whether they be family, friends, or co-workers.

“When we share our meals with other people, we are more emotionally balanced,” she said.