My #ProductivityHacks to kick start the second half of the year!

Kia ora e te whanau!

It's ridiculous considering the rate that this year has flown by and I can feel that for myself I'm asking where the first half of the year has gotten. With only a few days of the month left, I thought to share some of the ways I'm going to kick start the second half of the year with some of my favourite #ProductivityHacks - I'd love for you to join me and hear any of the ideas that you may have also.

#1 Create a daily plan

Setting your day up with a plan to execute not only helps you to make sure you know what needs to be done, but it also helps you to stay on track with your work flow with specific time stamps during the day. A tool I like to use to segment my time when designing my daily plan is the Pomodoro Technique.

Here's a flow of one of my favourite influencers - a lot of what I've learnt and my own schedules are learnt from Jenny Mustard:

#2 Hydration

Drinking 1-2L of water to start the day is beneficial for several reasons:

- It wakes you up!

- The water in your body after a long nights rest can help aid your digestion before breakfast.

- Your brain activity will be up and running at a faster rate.

- Your skin will thank you - as the largest organ of the body, it requires a lot of water constantly. You can be sure that your will see results in your skin after consistent water drinking in the morning.

For myself, I make sure that I fill my reusable bottle before bed with some apple cider vinegar and/or a splash of lemon juice for added health benefits and flavour.

#3 Meal Planning

Knowing what you will eat for the week helps with budgeting and making sure that you get all the nutritional value your body needs. There's a magnitude of resources online for easy recipes if you're new to cooking - I personally love to use YouTube to discover new ways of cooking food and combining flavours (pineapple and watermelon with chili flakes, anyone?)

Here's an example of how you can create 7 meals for $3.50 each:

#4 Goal Setting

Without a goal, you can't score. Similar to the daily planning hack, setting goals gives you something to work backwards from. With goals, you can arrange your actions accordingly and achieve some cool things given that you put your mind to it. However, there's no point in setting goals if you don't have process, nothing worth having comes without putting in the work first. When we focus first on our behaviour, then there is much more assurance in becoming the person that you're aiming to be.

Here's a great TED talk on how you can create those behavioural processes to achieve those goals:

#5 Routine Bible Reading

Out of all the productivity hacks, this one is by far the one that I believe is the most important. A few weeks ago, I posted about living the Bible Lifestyle that explains my stance on this. The reason I've saved this one until last is because it supports all the other habits. With this one set firmly in place, it changes our heart and outlook to motivate ourselves to naturally thrive in all those other areas.

To implement this daily reading, make sure you're following me on Twitter and Instagram as I'll be posting daily verses and content to help you along the way.

Let's have a chat on Twitter about what hacks you find useful, and tag me if you try any of these out - would love your feedback!