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How many times have you wished that each day had just a few more hours? Whether you spend your time in school or at work, you may feel like you are always rushed, and that there is never enough time to get everything done. If there was a way for you to be three times as productive would you use it? You can triple your productivity in everything that you do, and feel great doing it, when you know the secrets. These secrets can be used as parenting tips to help teens get more from their time and effort, and they also work with adults.

We live in a world today that is full of distractions and constant communication, and this will impact your ability to get things done. What usually happens is that you get interrupted and then it takes you 10-20 minutes just to get back to where you were before the interruption. Your idea flow is stopped, and time is wasted as a result.

This can be a big problem, especially if you are interrupted two or three times an hour (or more!). By the end of the day (or perhaps by the end of the night if it is your teen who is constantly interrupted while doing homework), you are left feeling drained and exhausted with little to show for all of your time and effort. Some say that in today’s world, people are interrupted on average 1000 times per day! Between ads, phone calls, text messages, email dings and beeps, people walking into our work environment, and communications from colleagues, clients or friends, there is little time left to actually work. By the time the day is over you are behind schedule, overwhelmed, stressed, and are looking for a way to escape this cycle.

The Power of Rest and Recovery

Breakthroughs in science and analytics show some amazing things when it comes to being productive. Today you can access your personal data to find out what you are doing correctly, and what you are not doing correctly, so that you can multiply your level of productivity and get more done in less time. How do you manage that? In other words, how do you manage to create a work environment that helps you create results that you want more easily? The answer is- rest and recovery.

As an example, in the book The Power of Full Engagement, authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz present stunning evidence to show what actually creates the great results and top notch productivity that we all want. One example in the book details finding out why the same tennis players are winning year after year, while others who look great or even better on paper, have no medals to show for it. What the authors found was very surprising.

After following every aspect of the athletes’ routines, food intake, sleep, training time, and other factors that are usually evaluated when measuring successful sports performance, they found that what separated the winners and losers had nothing to do with any of these aspects!

Do you want to know what made the top performers win consistently? It was rest and recovery, but special kinds of rest and recovery cycles that you need to pay attention to if you want to get the same benefits.

What Schwartz and Loehr found was that the winning athletes were taking mini breaks during the games of tennis, while the losing athletes were engaged and in “battle” mode even between sets. The winners were relaxing more often even while they were staying limber and warmed up, while the losers were still grabbing their rackets, staying tuned in the game zone, and wearing themselves out.

This was a huge breakthrough for the researchers, and this is why we can use the millions of dollars spent on these studies to create measurable performance increases in our personal lives.

Take Care of Yourself to be More Productive in the Long Run

The Power of Full Engagement also shows that you must take care of yourself if you want to be highly productive and have more energy each day. If you skip meals, skimp on your sleep at night, or do not allow yourself to rest and relax when needed, then you will not be as productive or as successful in the long run.

A diet of coffee and donuts will leave you feeling sluggish and in need of a nap. If you miss out on sleep, you will not only feel drained – you will look haggard, and spend much more time trying to locate simple items or answer basic questions. We have all seen people who are not taking proper care of themselves, and it is obvious that they need to get some rest and relax a little. The Power of Full Engagement is that you will have more energy when you take good care of yourself first, so you will get more done in less time.

How to be More Productive in Your Life

In your life right now you can significantly improve results and productivity just by using these same methods, whether you are a teen or a parent. Productivity tips for teenagers and adults include:

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses that you have. Do more of the things that you are good at or enjoy, and less of the other stuff (but of course whatever our assigned task is at work, or at home, we must do it whether we enjoy it or not).

• Eliminate all of the distractions while you work or study. This means turning off the cell phone, ignoring emails and texts, and removing other distractions. Once you start being more productive you will not miss these distractions at all.

• Schedule blocks of time to work or study, and leave time for rest and recovery. This usually means working for an hour, and then taking a brief (for teens, perhaps as much as 15 minutes) break. This is the best way to take advantage of the natural energy cycles in your body.

• When you work focused, and then step aside from your work station, you rest focused as well. You don’t rest at your desk! This is what the tennis players that won more did, they recovered from each set by stepping away from the net, looking at something else, and changing the racket in their hand to another hand. They switched from the working environment completely. Even if it was just 10 seconds, for them it did the trick.

• Rest and recover for a few minutes (for teens maybe 10-15 minutes) every hour. You will be amazed what you achieve in just 2 blocks of work and rest time, as opposed to what you have done before in 8 hours, or what your co-workers do now in 12.

• Take care of yourself properly, eating right and getting plenty of sleep each night.

If You’re Not Being Productive You Should be Resting and Relaxing

If you are not being productive, whether you are doing math homework or working on an important project for your boss or your own business, then you should be resting and relaxing so you recharge. This is one of the most important things that you can do to become more productive and make the most of the time that you have. We are not machines, but it is easy to lose sight of this in the hectic world today.

Bosses want more of our time and energy, teachers load us up with homework after spending much of the day in classes, and there is little time left for ourselves as it is. If you own your own business or work for yourself the pressures are just as intense, and you may spend every waking moment trying to get more out of each day.

What are your productivity tricks to get more done in less time? Please share below, we really want to know.