This is admittedly a big subject and many experts provide tons of information on how to be more productive at work. The below listed tips for increased productivity come from my own experience and from reading experts’ opinions.

1. Avoid interruptions. You probably already noticed that when you are in the middle of something and someone or something else interrupts you, you need that little extra time to remember what you were doing and focus again. Now, imagine this happening 2-3 times while you are struggling to prove a theorem or writing the abstract for your paper. Not only this is time wasting, it also makes you nervous about not finishing your tasks. Try to avoid these interruptions (phone calls, sms, facebook, etc) as much as possible. Group all these to do while you’re having a break. If a colleague wants your help, ask first if it’s really urgent, and if it’s not then ask politely if they can wait until you finish.

2. The first tip also implies focusing at one task at a time, because by switching between tasks you basically introduce a circle of interruptions, where you pause one task to focus on the other, then stop the second one to work on the third and so forth.

3. Determine your work flow. It really pays off to spend some time on organising the steps you will follow to accomplish a task, rather than starting in blind faith. You save effort and time by excluding unnecessary actions and avoiding the repetition of sub-tasks.

4. Manage your e-mail. Going through e-mails is a necessary evil, but still, according to many experts, people should limit reading e-mails to 3-4 times during the day. E-mails are hardly ever asking for something urgent. In addition, in my experience, if your supervisor or anyone else wants something right now, it’s more likely that they call you (either on phone or Skype, etc, if they are abroad) instead of sending an e-mail. Try to train the people you interact most to send you e-mail at the times you actually read your e-mail. This way they will know when to wait for a response. Moreover, try to group your e-mail into smart folders (e.g. “received today”, “VIP”, etc) based on the sender or the subject, so even when you check your e-mail, you only read the most important ones. Finally, don’t treat e-mail as a chatting service!

5. Use Pareto’s principle. Also known as the 80-20 rule, this principle basically states that 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of the causes. Despite not being a strict law, it’s particularly applicable in business, and so you can also have it as a rule of thumb to your own work, e.g. to set tasks priorities and time limits and generally make the decisions and actions that will have the biggest outcome with the smallest possible effort.

6. Have a calendar – and keep it synchronised. Having an overview of the current or next day is extremely useful to plan on how to utilise your available time, e.g. between meetings – and of course it helps not forgetting things. It’s also important to have it synchronised, so whenever or wherever you need it is available and up-to-date.

7. Put deadlines – Don’t postpone. It’s almost guaranteed that if you postpone a task for some later time over and over then you never do it. The key to actually finishing things is to set tight deadlines. Deadlines usually boost motivation and willingness to accomplish things, plus your creativity is switched on exactly because you are searching for ways to finish the tasks before the deadline is reached. Setting deadlines can also help in organising your schedule.

8. Manage time gaps effectively. There are crazy days that you need to attend one meeting after the other and there is limited time in between. Schedule in advance to fill small gaps with things that can be completed in short time and do as many as you can. It’s like setting the strict deadlines discussed above. At the end of the day you will feel relieved to realise that all these “chores” are suddenly out of the way!

9. Take breaks. After some time of intense thinking, the brain starts to lose its ability to concentrate. After that point, it needs more time to process and digest information, which causes even more fatigue and reduced productivity. When you feel tired, take a break, preferably go outside to have some fresh air and come back to continue. You will notice the difference right away!

10. Flexibility. You’ll probably find out that you cannot always follow all the productivity tips at work. Some of them might just not work for you, so don’t attempt to follow them by heart. The message is to have this advice handy but don’t hesitate to customise it to what suits best to you. Keep in mind that unexpected things do come up which often ruin your programme, so sometimes you will have to interrupt and do something else or read your e-mail again and again. You won’t settle to your own productivity habits unless you try!