5 productivity hacks to make you feel more energized and organized

Between our hustle culture and the familiar feeling of always being ‘connected,’ it’s easy to get distracted and lose focus throughout a busy day, especially if you’re a working mom who is already shouldering the mental load of your family. 

If you find yourself wanting to optimize your day but not having the brain space to do so, here are five productivity tips to help you move forward in your career—or at the very least, streamline your days so you’ll feel more energized and organized.

Related: 5 everyday habits of powerful working moms

5 productivity hacks for busy moms

1. Write out your top 3 priorities 

For working moms, in the rush of the morning routine—getting kids off to daycare or school—then jumping on work calls, attending meetings or heading to your job all day, it can be difficult to remember all the things on your ever increasing to do list. Fire drills during the day, a last-minute call from your boss, or slack message pinging you to pivot all have a tendency to derail us. 

Start out your morning by writing out 2 or 3 of your top to-do’s for that day will help keep you on track and will allow you to refocus when inevitable distractions come your way. I like to jot my day’s top priorities down in the notes app on my phone if I’m on the go. Other times, I go old school and write them down in my hard copy calendar or on a post it note by my computer.

2. Own your calendar 

If you’re overwhelmed with the volume of meetings, it’s time to take back control of your calendar. Assess if every meeting request you receive is a valuable use of your time. Decline politely if it’s not.

Start getting in the habit of looking out ahead to the next week (or two) and pick out two to three days a week where you block out time for yourself. This could be a half hour block to just catch your breath, have a proper lunch, check emails uninterrupted or even go to the gym in the middle of the day—whatever it is, this time should be all yours. Guard it. 

Related: 8 productivity strategies for moms who are stressed about doing it all

3. Block out time for strategic thinking

Give yourself some creative space where it’s quiet to do your best thinking. Aim to get into what I like to call your flow state, uninterrupted time spent laser focused on a strategic task, for at least one to two hours a week. If you work from home or at an office and are constantly on a computer, I suggest closing out of all the tabs you have open, exit out of Slack, shut down email, put your phone on silent and focus on forward thinking. It can be hard to shift our brains into higher level thinking and strategy mode, but prioritizing this by getting rid of distractions can help you advance your career and open new opportunities you didn’t know existed.

4. Take 10 minutes for a brain break 

Although it seems counterintuitive, allowing your brain to rest throughout the day, even for just a few short minutes, can make us more productive and prevent burnout. This National Institute of Health study shows that our brains are not meant to multitask as much as our modern world requires, leading to less effective decision making and leadership. 

Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin  writes in a New York Times article “Hit The Reset Button On Your Brain,” “every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.”

If you want to be more productive and creative, the science actually shows that you should focus on one task at a time for 20-30 mins and take short brain breaks in between. I recommend a short breathing exercise, a walk, meditation, or taking time to stretch your body away from your desk.

5. Pause before saying ‘Yes’

If you tend to say yes despite not having the bandwidth, try pausing before saying yes. assess if it’s in your job scope. Recent research from Lean In and McKinsey Company shows that women tend to take on more DEI, ERG work, and administrative-related tasks, but yet aren’t being compensated for it, leading to higher rates of burnout. In these instances, “I’ll get back to you,” is a perfectly acceptable answer which can give you more time and space to decide whether you have the capacity to take on more work.

Related: My personal priorities have shifted since becoming a parent in unexpected ways

For people-pleasing personalities, saying no can be difficult. But learning to decline and set better boundaries are important skills to learn and can lead to feelings of empowerment and autonomy.

So next time you are feeling overwhelmed, try implementing these small shifts into your day and I promise you will feel more energized, organized and ready to tackle that long to-do list.