This blog is about my personal experience and learnings. In today's blog post, I will share some daily habits that I am working on to increase my productivity by 4X.

I consider myself hardworking, efficient and productive too! But I will be soon 40 years old, I am feeling some sense of emergency and wish to accomplish more before I get 45 and then 50.

For this, I must get more efficient, focused and at least 4X productive.

I am bad at concentrating on tasks throughout my day. I’ve seen this take a toll on my productivity and business as a whole. I get interrupted, and I’m terrible at saying “no” to questions, comments, meetings, etc.

I’m actively working on improving my productivity. I’ve had some successes recently. I’ve managed to boost the time. In recent, I was able to come completely out of our system integration business, which is now handled by my co-founder. This allowed me to focus on building new products, discover new markets and partners. That is pretty good for ShimBi Labs and me.

When I am doing creative work, I feel I am more productive.

There are thousands of articles, books, and videos on this very topic of increasing productivity. I’ve tried many things, but only a handful worked for me. Those that worked for me are the one that I discovered myself from my daily habits and my nature.  

Here are daily habits that increased my productivity:

1. I decided to get up 5 am to add that two extra hours to my day. Though this is not a new habit for me, there was some gap, but now I am back on track. And there is no Sunday off to rising at 5 am!
    
2. I don't check emails during these two early hours but spend more time on reading, walking and doing our companies product reviews. And yes write something on Saturday Mornings.
    
3. I avoid checking any social networks during working hours. My office work hours are 8 am to 5 pm, but as the founder of the business, I work 24/7 in a different formats. The only exception is when I am travelling or sometimes during events or lunch breaks I check Twitter!
    
4. 10 years ago I decided keep my head shaved, and that saved me a lot of my time on making my hairs. Early this month I decided to simplify my wardrobe, now I have few pairs of jeans and same colour T-Shirts to wear at work! Sure I will still wear formals when they are required. I am excited to see how much time it will save for me!
    
5. Usually, I like to sit at my open office desk, but when I need to focus on the certain task, then I try to shut myself in one of our conference room. And avoid checking emails, take calls.  Let others know that I am busy when I’m working on a task.
    
6. Every evening, I spend 15–20 minutes creating a list of tasks for the next day. After checking which tasks are left and which are accomplished, I add new ones to the list and prioritise them. Priority is very important.
    
7. Every morning, I meet my direct reporting staff for 15 to 20 minutes standing meeting to align all tasks and priorities of the day. In the night before I go to bed, I check daily reports from all staff, to keep me updated on the progress of task and projects.
    
8. Oh yes, I walk or run morning and evening at least 4 to 5 km and sometimes more on weekends, this gives me ample time to reflect and re-focus on my thoughts.
    
9. I reduced the number of conferences and events I will attend per month. It's better to spend more time with your client than going to conferences and listening to lectures on how to exit from the business!
    
10. Reduced 60% of micro-managing tasks, I want to increase this percentage to 90%. I will still be involved in Product UI design and Product releases.
     

I try to adhere to these habits every single day. Apart from these habits I use following few tools to help me.

• Notebook
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
• Callander on iPad and MacBook
• Notes on iPad and MacBook
• Sending emails to myself

I am also experimenting with many different ideas too. I’d be curious to hear if you have any ideas you have tried and tested.

Here are few things I am still struggling with; I am working on them. I hope soon I will able to overcome them also.

1. The list of tasks that I create only receives about half of my time every day. I wish I had more time to work on these tasks, but the reality is that I don’t. Meetings, conversations, and calls get in the way.
    
2. All though I don’t watch TV with focus, but I keep it on all the time at home. I need to get rid of it; I am planning to reduce TV time to 1 hour per day.
    
3. I must increase my reading time; I am trying my best to find time for it.
    
4. I am working hard to got to bed by 10:30 pm but somehow it's always 12:30 am, it is taking toll on health. This would be the top priority for me.

I know most entrepreneurs struggle with productivity, so I’m not alone. Feel free to send and share any tips and tools that have increased your productivity.