How to Shift Your Mindset to Skyrocket Your Productivity

It’s the end of the day. You can finally relax. You’ve been so busy that you’ve barely had time to draw breath. But when you check your to-do list, you realize in horror that you didn’t even get half the things done you’d planned to. You gave it your all, and this is the result? How can that be? The good news is that it isn’t your fault. It’s not because you didn’t try hard enough or you’re lazy. It’s because of your mindset. Don’t worry, though. If you didn’t know that your mindset can affect your productivity, you’re not alone. Most people aren’t aware of how their mindset affects their daily lives. It’s also not a conscious decision. After all, it’s not like you wake up and think to yourself, “Today, I am going to fail at everything I do.” So, how does mindset affect productivity?

Discover How Your Mindset Is Sabotaging Your Attempts to Be Productive 

First, it’s essential to make the distinction between being productive and being busy. Being productive means that you are working towards achieving your goals in an organized manner. Being busy means that you’re just doing stuff. If your goal is to increase your income, then working on expanding your business’ client base means you’re productive. Reorganizing your desk, doing the laundry, or cleaning your kids’ rooms, conversely, is busywork. 

Mindset will dictate where you focus. If you’re riddled with limiting beliefs, your mind will prove you right. If you believe you don’t deserve to earn more money, or you have a poor relationship with money, or you’ll fail no matter what you do, your mind will happily make those limiting beliefs a reality. Our limiting beliefs hold us back because it’s our brain’s way of trying to spare us the pain associated with these beliefs. If you believe you don’t deserve to make more money, then your mind will want to spare you the pain of failure and sets your limiting belief to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, you don’t work on important tasks that could move you closer to your goal. 

Instead, you do busywork. You’ve still accomplished something, but it’s not the right something. Conversely, a positive mindset ensures that your brain is on board with your desires, turning it into an ally instead of the villain of your story. A positive mindset activates your RAS (reticular activating system), ensuring that your brain “sees” and takes advantage of all the opportunities and resources that will move you closer to your goal. 

If you think this is airy-fairy, hippy mumbo-jumbo, plenty of studies support this idea. Jessica Pryce-Jones, CEO of iOpener Institute and author of Happiness at Work, conducted a study on 3,000 people in 79 countries. She discovered that people who said they were happy tended to be 50% more motivated and productive at work. They were also 180% more energetic and 108% more engaged.

How to Develop a Productive Mindset

Now that we’ve established the connection between productivity and your mindset, how do you develop an attitude conducive to becoming a more productive person? Develop a Vision When setting goals, many of us tend to have a fuzzy idea of what we want. If you’re going to be productive, you need a clear vision of what your goals are. You need to be able to close your eyes and see exactly what your life will look like once you achieved your goal. And you need to visualize this future every day because it will help you stay productive. Your brain will want that future, so it will do everything it can to help you achieve it.

Establish Clear Motivations

Motivation is the key to achieving anything. Unfortunately, it tends to be as fickle as a toddler faced with shiny new toys. But that’s usually because most of us look for motivation in the wrong place. We establish goals we want to achieve and expect the result to be enough to make us get in gear and go full steam ahead. The one thing we rarely look at is the “why.” Why do you want to achieve your goal? When you dig deep, you’ll discover the compelling reason that will drive you forward no matter what.

Get Persistent

When motivation alone isn’t cutting it, you need to get persistent. You need to put your head down, ignore distractions, and keep moving forward. Persistence is what will get you through the tough times. It’s what will help you overcome obstacles, even when it seems as if everything is going wrong. However, being persistent can be tough, especially when the going gets rough. To overcome this problem, make sure you’re moving forward, even if you’re taking baby steps.

Practice Gratitude and Positivity

When you’re grateful for what you already have, it’s much easier to adopt a positive mindset. Positivity is essential to maximizing productivity because if you let negativity rule your life, you will never achieve your goals. Of course, you will still have negative thoughts. However, you need to turn those thoughts into positive ones. Otherwise, you will end up believing your negativity and sabotage yourself long before you achieve your goals.

Develop Better Behaviours 

The idea of “routine” scares many people, but humans thrive on routines. The human brain can perform actions that have become routine on auto-pilot. The brain tends to be lazy, so whenever it’s faced with a choice between actions that take a lot of thought and activities that are already a routine, it will always pick the routine. Develop a morning routine that prepares your brain for a productive day. Develop habits at work that ensure you get everything done you need to. Develop routines for a relaxing evening to let your brain shut down, so it’s ready to go the next day. Routines might scare you because they’re “boring,” but you’ll learn to love them when you see how much more you can get done. And how much easier it is when you’ve got effective routines in place.

Avoid Multi-Tasking 

Multi-tasking does not work. No matter what anyone says, our brains aren’t like modern computers that can focus on multiple tasks simultaneously. When you try to do more than one thing at a time, what happens is that you switch from one task to another in sequence. That switch requires you to refocus on the new task, which takes longer and longer as you get more tired. Instead, focus on one thing at a time. You’ll get it done faster and better than if you were to try to do multiple things at once.

Be Mindful

Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment. Yes, you need to look towards the future too, but if you’re constantly in the future, you’ll never derive joy from the present. You’ll also find yourself dreaming more than doing. So, be present throughout your day. Think of what you’re working on. Make sure that it’s really something that will move you towards achieving your goal. If it is, then work on it with focus and intent. If it isn’t, then ask yourself if it’s something you need to be doing. It’s also a sign that you need to be more aware of what you’re working on. Don’t let your brain take the easy road that delivers immediate pleasure but no long-term joy or happiness.

Conclusion

Imagine what you’d feel like at the end of a productive day. Imagine how accomplished and confident you’d feel when you see that you achieved everything you wanted to and you are that much closer to fulfilling your dreams. All you have to do is change your mindset. It might seem a bit of a challenge at first, but with practice, you’ll be able to do anything you set your mind to, including adopting a more productive mindset.