I’m a part-time doctor, business owner, creator & coach.

It would be physically impossible for me to do all the things I do if I didn’t work as efficiently as possible.

I’ve always been a person to have various plates spinning & over the years I’ve tried various productivity hacks to help me.

There’s usually an emphasis with productivity hacks to fit more into your time but for me it’s about finding ways for me to use my time as efficiently as possible. It’s about creating space within my life whether that’s for “work” or not....

Here are the hacks which help me work as efficiently as I can!

This is what I do when I have tasks on my “to do list” which sit there for days (at times weeks) on end.... It’s a productivity tip/expression which is used to describe when you do a job first thing during your day which you know is going to be a bit of a tricky one to swallow. It’s important to do this job at the start of your day because you have more willpower, you’re less likely to be distracted by other things that have inevitably found their way into your day (this happens to me all the time) & you don’t have any time pressure of the day coming to the end. Your frog might come in all shapes and sizes. It might be organising the MOT for your car, getting your arse to the gym or it might be a bit more complex... I don’t use this hack every day but it saves me hours of procrastination when I’m faced with a more stubborn task. Try it!

As I began working part-time as a doctor, I started to have more days where I was in complete control of my time (at least I thought I was). I started to get into a really bad habit of pressing snooze on my alarm because I didn’t technically have to be awake at a certain time. This gave me an extra 8 minutes of sleep. This was blissful UNTIL my alarm went off again. I would re-wake feeling like I’d had the shortest 30 seconds of sleep that left me only craving for more & guess what.... I’d press snooze AGAIN. I’m not sure what the maximum number of times I used to do this for but just 3 times would mean I’d accumulated 24 minutes of really poor quality sleep. I could have been using that time to enjoy a cup of tea, reading or doing just about anything. I decided I would try turning off the snooze button & I haven’t looked back since! It allows me to slow down my mornings & use this previously wasted time to do other things for me like reading, journalling or just enjoying a cup of tea.

I would argue this is the most important lesson we all “learnt” from school & it helps me so much to work efficiently.... The same way I used to have a schedule of “lessons” for different subjects at school, I try to create a schedule for my own life each day by blocking out time for different things. It can include anything & everything from the boring jobs I need to get ticked off my to do list to going to the gym to spending time relaxing. I find it’s particularly helpful when I’ve got multiple projects on the go, as I can allocate chunks of work I need to do for each project to specific blocks of time. There are so many reasons this helps me to be more productive... It creates an invisible deadline which means I naturally procrastinate less. It allows me to focus on the task I’m currently working on rather than worrying about all the other things I should be doing (I know I’ve got another block of time to focus on those). It forces me to organise the different things I need/want to do & prioritise them. 

This might sound silly or like I’m joking but I’m really not... I’ve learnt I need a clock. This CANNOT be a phone or apple watch. I need an actual clock which doesn’t do anything else except tell me the time. I think it’s natural for humans to check the time. We like to be orientated to where we are within the day, especially if we’ve got time commitments. I used to use my phone for this but the problem with this is I’d check my phone to see the time (which should take max 5 seconds) & before I knew it I’d spent 5 minutes (& the rest) checking my notifications or worse scrolling through social media... As much as we hate to admit it, our phones have become a huge part of our lives and we will likely have developed certain habits around using them. They can be a weapon of mass distraction if we let them. I would hate to add up how much time I previously wasted just to “check the time”. 

I’m not talking about a ridiculous morning routine where I get up at 5am, journal for 20 mins before having a cold shower. I’m talking about just getting up & getting moving.... This starts with making my bed. This initial movement helps me to start my day with momentum which gives me more momentum for the rest of my day. It’s a bit like trying to push a massive rock, it’s much easier to keep the thing rolling once you’ve got it started.  I try to them make sure I always know what my first task is going to be following on from my morning routine... I try to “roll” into it with the momentum my initial routine has given me. There are days when I find I need myself to have more momentum than others & there are still some days where I catch myself starting my day sat stationary on my phone for far too long... Those days are always much harder to get myself going!

These productivity hacks really help me when it comes to finding time for both my professional & personal lives!

They have played a huge part in helping me to improve my own work-life relationship. 

They help me to make my working time more efficient which creates space for me to spend time doing other things I want/need to do within my days. 

I would really recommend trying to find different hacks which work for you in a similar way. Let me know if you’ve found this blog post helpful just send me an email (elle@gabrielletodd.com). Alternatively, click here to be kept updated with new blog posts!