Love Your Purpose. Hate the Busywork: 5 Life Hacks for Productivity

“Live your purpose. Follow your light. Live your truth.” If a lot of us made this our daily aim, life would be so much more fulfilling and even peaceful. The key to living out your purpose is first discovering why you were put on this planet; how your gifts and talents can be best put to use. The next step is to implement a plan that will get your goals accomplished.

Unfortunately, doing this requires some tedious tasks that may not be your favorite things to do. But they must be done. The silver lining is if you implement the following five life hacks, you’ll be able to get things done a lot easier and quicker. That will make you more productive and that will help you to cross more and more things off of your “purpose to-do list”.

1. Write a mission statement

If you work for a company, it probably has a mission statement; something that helps everyone to remember the reason why the business exists and what the overall objectives are. It’s what helps to keep everyone focused and working towards the same goals. Your purpose? It also needs to have a mission statement. By putting something in writing concerning why you exist and what you ultimately want to achieve, it will help you to make the most of your time, talents and resources. (Click here for tips on how to write a personal mission statement.)

2. Have weekly goals

Say that you feel your purpose in life is to encourage others to discover their own purpose and one way you want to do that is to write a book. The ultimate goal is to complete a manuscript, but there are a lot of little goals that need to be achieved along the way to make that happen. You need to set weekly goals. One week, write an outline. Another week, decide if you want it to be an audio book or not. Another week, seek out the pros and cons of self-publishing. Each week, devote a couple of hours to writing your chapters. If you break things down into smaller portions, not only will it help to keep you organized; you won’t be quite so overwhelmed.

3. Don't live on your phone

A wise woman once said “If you’re on the phone for more than 15 minutes, you’re probably just repeating yourself.” Is that true across the board? Maybe not, but it still contains quite a bit of wisdom. Answering every call, constantly checking your email and social media accounts---both take up a lot of time. Time that could be devoted to getting things on your to-do list done. It really is best to set aside hours when you plan to catch up with a friend or retweet things you see on Twitter. There are only 24 hours in each day and they all go by pretty fast. Make sure to make the most of each one. That’s going to require being disciplined when it comes to your phone.

4. Ask others to help you

You’re going to be able to get a lot more done if you ask for help. The important thing is to look for people who are strong in areas you are week. For instance, if you’re not the best writer and you need to draft a newsletter, ask an editor friend to help you. Or if you know you’re not the best with money, but you have an accountant in your life, see how much they would be willing to assist you with your books. Sometimes we’re spending way too much time on “busywork” simply because we don’t know how to do it efficiently. Usually, though, there’s someone around us who can. And is willing to.

5. Create a schedule

Think about it. If you sat and watched two movies back-to-back, that’s already 4-6 hours spent. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that. Someone once said that time devoted to having fun is NEVER wasted. It’s just to show you that hours go by really fast. For example, you could drive to another state in that same amount of time. To keep things on track, you should always create a schedule. That will help you to hold yourself accountable to every hour that you spend. The more you make the most of each one, the more you can get done. Bottom line? The less busywork you will have. And isn't that simply wonderful?