How the Rule of 5 Is Helping Busy People Become Productive

Everyone is busy these days. Life has gotten busier than it used to be. And despite this, people are still finding it quite difficult to achieve their goals. So what’s the problem?

What does this mean? It means, many people are busy yet aren’t doing anything productive.

Productivity and busyness are different things entirely, and most times these two are not well defined by an average person so he or she keeps going back and forth trying to accomplish a goal, but still can’t quite get anything done. They become so burned out, 24 hours doesn’t seem sufficient anymore. Their desk looks horrible, all littered with files & documents of all sorts, yet little or nothing is being achieved.

There are  four practical & innovative ways you can become more efficient and reach your goals on a daily basis.

1. The rule of five

2. Getting up early to work on your tasks

3. Confronting your fear of uncertainty

4. Pushing through challenges 

In this article, we’ll look at the rule of five, as it is quite simple and very effective. The rule of five helps you work towards your goals in bit size pieces. It allows you to make a list of five action plans you could take on a daily basis. This creates a rinse and repeat strategic plan that can be completed each day.

These are tasks that you’d be able to achieve for every day you set them. Once you do, you move on to the next five tasks for the next day, on and on until you finally hit the bullseye.

Why Do So Many People Fail at Achieving Their Goals?

Because they set so many unrealistic goals for themselves & they sometimes get lost in the middle. They become confused themselves and end up wasting the whole day on things that were not important.

They are disorganized, as well. When you set goals, make sure you put everything in order. If you just jump from task “A–C” and then back and forth, you’ll get stuck, you will end up not finishing anything, and yet you’ll feel tired, burned out and when you look at what you have been working on, it’ll be a total mess. Nothing will be accomplished.

Another reason people fail at achieving their goals is because when they get stuck, they just abandon the whole project. Some will just procrastinate and tell themselves, “Yeah I‘ll get back to this later” but in the real sense of things, they’ve already given up.

What you should do if you are in such situation is to talk to someone or simply engage in a brainstorming session with others who have more knowledge on the subject matter.

This happens to me all the time and I’ve gotten great help by simply posting a question or about a challenge I’m having with a project, and people start volunteering to help out or give me helpful tips that solved the problem. Reddit is great for this. 

Another thing I’ve found is, in most cases when I become stuck, it’s just my body telling me to take a little break. In such cases, I would usually take a nap or go on a walk and sit somewhere cool, listen to podcasts or cool soundtracks. Naps works best for me.

Changing your scenery and taking a walk really helps restore you back to a productive state.

The rule of five helps you to organize your life and work ethic, it helps you cut your tasks into bit size pieces and lets you work on five productive things on a daily basis until you finally finish off and achieve your ultimate goal.

To be successful you need to do things in a very organized manner. If you are disorganized, your goals will be unachievable.

Start using the rule of five to organize your day to day activities. Set five actionable and realistic tasks for yourself daily and you’ll be amazed how fast you’ll get closer to your goals.