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14 Day-To-Day Hacks That Will Vastly Improve Your Productivity

Coffee can only do so much.

Peggy Wang
by Peggy Wang

BuzzFeed Staff

Thinkstock/Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed

According to Quora, these are the best day-to-day time saving hacks.

1. The Two-Minute Rule:

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2. The Five-Minute Rule

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3. Practice good habits.

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If you want to, say, become a better writer or learn video editing, you should do a little bit every day. Holidays are no exception.

4. Streamline your email usage.

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Check email only at designated times of the day (but not first thing in the morning or in the evening) and clear your inbox.

5. Divide and conquer.

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Need to make seven phone calls? Write 10 emails? Have a designated time every day to do those things, and batch the tasks together.

6. Keep a sleep schedule.

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7. Know how you spend your time.

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You can use a smartphone app like aTimeLogger to track the time you spend on your phone. Wow, you spend 25 hours a week playing Candy Crush? Time to delete from your phone.

It's also wise to write down a complete log of everything you do for at least a week to see what the patterns are and where you could stand to streamline your time.

8. Keep your choices limited.

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Save your willpower for important tasks instead of wasting time and energy on menial decisions.

Keep your wardrobe simple (for instance, buy just one color of work socks), and have satisfying go-to meals that can always be your default.

9. Create shortcuts and automate the process for tasks you do every day.

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With IFTTT (If This Then That), you can create "recipes" for your email, smartphone, and social media networks. For instance, if you miss a call, you can set it to automatically create an event in your calendar in the evening to call them back. Or create a recipe for something as beautifully simple as being notified if it's going to rain tomorrow.

10. Turn off your distractions.

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Use a browser extension like StayFocused that will block all or certain websites for a designated period of time.

11. It's about energy, not time.

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Don't burn out. You'll be more effective if you turn your brain off at the end of a long day instead of pushing it past its limit.

Read more about a very popular technique called Pomodoro that involves cycling your working time with mind breaks.

12. Don't overcommit.

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If you feel like you're falling into a legit busy trap, it's time to sweep the irrelevant stuff off your plate.

13. Don't trust your memory.

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Keep a notebook and write everything down. Your goals, your tasks, books you want to read, ingenious ideas that happen to pop into your head. There's no need to waste brainpower on attempting to retrieve something you thought of three days ago. This will help you keep a clearer head.

14. Start with tiny habits.

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Wanna get in shape? Start with one push-up. Wanna start being a "neat" person? Start with making your bed every day. You want to develop the habit and stick with it. You can build upon these tiny habits over time, which will eventually help you get you the results that you're looking for.

Read more about BJ Fogg's "Tiny Habits" method here.

Now get off the internet and get back to work!

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