10 Best Practices

1. Create a Routine – What is the first thing you do each day and how does it help or hurt your productivity? Create a morning routine that makes you feel fresh and ready to start the day.
2. Prioritize Your List – Spend some time each day creating a list of things to do that are prioritized from most important to least. 
3. Full Focus – When you’re performing a task, give it your full attention. If you find yourself too distracted or burnt-out, take a break and come back to the task when you can give it your full focus.
4. Get Decluttered – Declutter your workplace, your mind, and your list of things to do. Remove distractions and things that waste your time, and you’ll find yourself being much more productive.
5. Pre-Work Rituals – One way to harness your focus is to create a pre-work ritual. This is a simple ritual that gets you into the right state of mind. It could be something like meditation, yoga, or listening to music. 
6. Eliminate Distractions – Identify the things that distract you and hurt your productivity most. These are your main enemies! Develop special strategies to eliminate and/or control them.
7. Use Your Natural Rhythms – Discover your best times of day to focus. Each of us has our own natural rhythms. Get in touch with yours and use them to your advantage. 
8. Log Your Time – Monitor how you spend your time each day. For a week or two, keep a work log or journal. Look back over it and you may be surprised to discover how you’re really spending your time.
9. Stay Healthy – Stay in the best physical health possible because it affects your mindset. Get some exercise, eat and sleep well, and develop some strategies for handling stress. 
10. Seek Help – You’re not alone! Seek help when you need it and get some of the unnecessary items off your to-do list

10 Things to Avoid

1. Multitasking – Work on one task at a time and give it your full attention. When you multitask, you don’t give any task the attention it deserves. 
2. Going Solo – You can’t do everything yourself and you shouldn’t try. Instead, delegate and outsource whatever tasks you can so you can focus on the most important things you need to do.
3. Being Too Helpful – Of course, you want to help people, but too many requests can destroy your productivity. Learn to say no.
4. Being Too Available – You want to be reachable, but there’s a time to turn the notifications off. When you’re busy on a task that requires focus, turn off all communications.
5. Procrastination – Don’t put things off until later, no matter what excuses you can come up with. If you feel the urge to procrastinate, it means you need to perform the task now. 
6. Too Much To Do – Don’t overload your to-do list with unnecessary items. Keep it down to only what really needs to be done today.
7. Cutting Back on Sleep – Don’t sleep less thinking it’ll give you more time to work, and thus make you more productive. Good sleep is essential for maintaining focus, so make sure you’re getting enough.
8. Constant Email Checking – Don’t constantly check your email throughout the day. Set aside certain times for checking email and replying. The same goes for social media.
9. Working Too Long – Make sure you take plenty of breaks and get away from your workspace. You’ll come back to work refreshed with renewed focus.
10. No Leisure Time – With all you have to do, don’t skimp on your leisure time. You need to relax, unwind and enjoy the things you like doing. Make sure you have some leisure time each day.