Productivity has become a pretty popular topic on the web over the past few years, and it’s for good reason.

It relates to your ability to produce output in a set time frame.

In a money-earning context, this can mean producing more content or manufacturing more products to increase income.

Productivity is about working smarter, not harder.

When you are more productive, you will earn more money, build more muscle, improve your relationships, and still have time at the end of the day to watch Netflix.

Sounds pretty good.

But most people don’t know the first thing about being productive. Most people, heck, most billion-dollar corporations have got it wrong.

If you want to experience the highest work rate that you are capable of, here are the tools you will need.

1. Intense Focus

On the surface, this makes sense.

To complete any work of value, you have to spend periods of intense concentration thinking about that task to generate practical ideas.

If you want to drift into a state of ‘deep work’ — a kind of flow state where much of your best work will happen — your concentration must not be divided between the current task and other menial tasks.

The problem is that our attention can be pulled away in an instant by any number of external stimuli.

As a consequence, disciplining ourselves to remain focused is a near-impossible task.

The best thing we can do is optimize our environment.

In your working environment, turn off notifications on your devices. Keeping your phone out of the room is an even better idea if you don’t need it with you.

Another important thing is working in private.

This is something that most large companies get wrong.

In the US, an astonishing 70% of companies have some kind of open-plan office space integrated into their working environment.

Open-plan offices are terrible for productivity because there are so many distractions that can pull your attention away from the task at hand.

Data shows that employees can be 66% less productive due to distractions in open-plan offices compared to private offices. These employees are only working at 1/3 of their capacity!

It’s a wonder how companies with open-plan spaces can survive when so much output is being wasted.

I learned this the hard way. I used to think bringing my laptop downstairs and working around my family would be a good idea.

But I very quickly became frustrated by how little I got done. It wasn’t the fault of anybody, but rather the nature of the environment.

When you are around other people, they will naturally feel inclined to strike up conversations with you more frequently or ask you unnecessary questions.

The background noise is also unavoidable and very distracting.

One more thing that I have begun doing is pre-planning my work sessions.

When you know when you are going to start working, how long you will work for, and when you will stop working, you minimize the decision fatigue of making these decisions during your work block.

If you are trying to figure out the logistics of your day while you are trying to work, the quality of your work will inevitably decrease.

Pre-planning also reduces the space for procrastination. You can’t keep delaying starting the work because you have already promised yourself a starting time.

So, in summary, to remain fully focussed you must:

• Turn off notifications on your devices
• Keep sources of distraction out of the room e.g mobile phones
• Work isolated, or at least in a quiet environment.
• Pre-plan your work session

2. Intermittent Fasting

You might think diet has little to do with how much work you can do, but that isn’t the case.

In my experience, intermittent fasting has resulted in an unexpected, but huge, boost to my productivity.

I’m talking here about performing your important work while in a fasted state, for example before your first meal of the day.

See, after you have a large meal, and are digesting food, the body has to divert resources away from other systems in the body, towards the digestive system.

This means your brain has reduced resources to function.

Some people are more sensitive to this than others.

Some notice they feel very sleepy after a large meal, others don’t notice a difference.

But regardless of how sensitive you are, it is true that you will experience reduced mental capacity after consuming a large meal. And this can make a difference if you are performing a cognitively demanding task.

For my whole life, I have always eaten pretty much as soon as I woke up so I never experienced what it was like to work in a fasted state.

But now, I feel much mentally sharper when I work fasted. I also find it much easier to slip into a ‘flow state’

So if you are seeking maximum productivity, it is a good idea to consider completing the most important tasks, before the first meal of your day.

3. Do Your Important Work In The Morning

This goes hand in hand with the point mentioned above.

Doing your important work in the morning makes it easier to work in a fasted state.

In addition, allocating the morning only to important work tasks will all but eliminate procrastination.

If you can only check your phone or watch TV after say 12:30 pm, you will be much more motivated to get all your work done as efficiently as possible in your morning work block.