4 Fun Ways to Improve Your Productivity
What better way to live than having fun and being productive at the same time? Fun productivity techniques enable you to both enjoy the moment and be more productive for the rest of your life.
I’ve tried out a lot of productivity techniques and all of them ended up boring, even for productivity nerds like me. These 4 are the exceptions, though.
Here are 4 fun ways to improve your productivity and focus:
Make Everything Into a Challenge to Motivate You
This is my favorite technique when I’m going through a huge list of chores or boring work stuff. I make the list into a fun challenge — a game.
Do you say it’s impossible to turn your drudgery into entertainment? Not so. We just need a goal, a reward, and competition.
First, define the goal and the time you have to complete it in. Set a timer showing a challenging amount of time and then start the clock.
Next, you need to identify the reward to get you going. Some rewards may include:
– Watching a guilt-free movie
– Eating a snack
– Spending an hour on your hobby
After you’ve done it a couple of times, you can set out to beat your previous high score. See? It became almost as fun as a real game.
Look at Cute Baby Animals to Improve Focus
Yeah, this was a real study. Researchers presented pictures of baby animals to test subjects. The participants who looked at pictures of baby animals outperformed the ones who didn’t in tasks requiring attentional focus.
So, it isn’t a simple waste of time to look at baby animals. Before doing any work that requires focus, glance at some photos of baby animals in blogs or Reddit.
See Also: 5 Techniques for Increasing your Focus in 5 Minutes
Increase Your Writing Speed by Playing Typeracer
Learning to type faster (touch typing) can save you thousands of hours in your career. The average typing speed is about 40 words per minute (WPM). Increase that to 80 WPM and it halves your typing time. I’ve done that very thing with TypeRacer.
TypeRacer is an online game where you race against other players also trying to increase their writing speeds. You are using cars but it instead of fuel, they’re powered by typing. The faster you can type the quote shown, the more likely you are to win. For gamifying email, I suggest The Email Game.
TypeRacer is addictive because you want to beat the other players, your high score, and get into the top list. When I introduced it to my friends, they didn’t even think it was a productivity technique. A dozen people started playing when they had their break!
Spend More Time on Your Favorite Things by Taking Breaks
I probably don’t have to convince you that it’s fun to do whatever you find really fun. It’s actually extremely productive to take a break doing just that when your work performance starts to drop. The break then lets you recharge and get back to your desk focused. And there are even more benefits.
As long as you don’t do pseudo-work *cough* email *cough* you can spend time on your favorite hobby, gossip to your colleagues, or read an awesome book. My personal favorite is to relax by taking a walk outside. My favorite tools for scheduling those breaks are the chrome extension Toggle and the iPhone app Focus Keeper. Set the timer, work, and break when it rings.
Living an enjoyable and productive life is one of the best things you can do and I think these techniques can help you do that. Make everything into a challenge, look at baby animals, play the TypeRacer game and spend more time on hobbies by taking breaks. I hope you have a lot of fun improving your productivity.
See Also: 10 Productivity Musts for Freelancers
