100 productive things to do

I’ve already talked about the “100 days of productivity” project that has made their rounds on social media in the study community, but I haven’t shown you 100 productive things to do in those 100 days. Here are the first 10 and a free eBook with all 100 ideas in them:

Declutter & Organize your pantry

Pantries get so chaotic in such a short amount of time (unless you are a superwoman working from home). And organizing your pantry is actually kind of relaxing. You get to sort out foods you don’t want to eat anymore, you create little meal ideas in your head. You make a new system that works for you and probably looks better. AND it only takes around an hour most of the time, we just never make that time for it. If you wanna make it extra fun (and a bit more expensive) you can get containers to put certain products in (i.e. pasta, flour, sugar, oils, etc.).

Backup your digital files

We all know that it is important, but we all keep putting it off. Take an afternoon to backup your phone on your computer and your computer on 1-2 hard drives (they got incredibly affordable in the last years). Save important documents in password-protected files, sort out some pictures that you have double, upload often used things into a cloud. If you have a business it’s especially important to upload your branding material to a cloud to always have access. If you’re a student you should always have a PDF with important numbers, emails and outlines in your drive, and your bigger works should also be there. Don’t lose half of your thesis to a crashed computer!

Unsubscribe from newsletters

This is satisfying, saves you time in your inbox and also saves especially smaller businesses money. If you are not interested anymore, businesses don’t need to send you deals anymore. Knowing you are not interested anymore instead of being a ghost subscriber on their mailing list actually saves them money. So consider doing this every once in a while in case you follow a lot of newsletters of bloggers that you don’t care about anymore. In case you ARE still interested but only in certain types of emails, email them back and ask them for that. Most of us have a system behind who gets which email. However, if you don’t wanna get buying recommendations, you’re probably out of luck, since newsletters are a form of email marketing. #supportsmallbusinesses

Take a free course online

This is something a ton of people seem to forget to do as soon as they leave the education system. Sure, you learn lots of things in your normal day-to-day life, but you could learn some seriously cool shit if you just search for it online. Doesn’t matter if it’s a course on Youtube, a free trial on some learning platform or a free course on Skillshare (I recently learned that they have some for free, no need to sign up!). Take out your notebook and learn something new that you can nerd out about. There is nothing more satisfying than listening to somebody talk about that topic later on in the month/year and understanding what they are saying. You also tend to be able to help more people in case they have a problem with the topic you learned stuff about.

Sort through your email inbox

Yes, I already talked about unsubscribing from newsletters, but that’s not what this is. You should create a system in your inbox that makes sense. This works especially with Googlemail. You can create folders, tags and what not to sort your inbox. I save a lot of emails for later. Some of my folders as an example:

• self care/personal development: Emails from my Fitbit, my writing stats and the tool monitoring my screen time.
• Blog & Newsletter: Any statistics and helpful tips I’ve gotten to my inbox about my blog.
• Happy Customers & Readers: This is self-explanatory.
• Selling & Receipts: Every email sent to me about selling on any kind of platform from Society 6 designs to my digital products on my blog.
  

Go for a long walk

Yes, this is a productive thing, since you are doing something incredibly important for your health. Walks are great for your physical and mental health and help you process your thoughts. It doesn’t matter if you are walking around the block for 15 minutes or if you go into nature for 2 hours. Both options are benefitting you in some way and are valid. Take some time for yourself so you can create some balance between work and relaxation. I’d go as far as saying that this is in my top 5 things of the 100 productive things to-do list.

Create a full skincare routine

Skincare is important. If you want to hear it or not. There are some basic products that you should use. Mainly cleanser, moisturizer and toner. It can actually be really fun to find products that have both good ingredients and good prices. I use an app called “CodeChecker” and you’ll probably find similar ones. Those kinds of apps tell you what bad stuff is in your products and I recently learned how much microplastic is in my “The Body Shop” products and through their database, I could find brands that are only 3-4 more bucks but way better for my skin and nature. You’d be surprised how bad some cheap, expensive or “natural” sounding brands are. If you wanna start making an effort for your skin you should also look into more than just the three main products. For example: Did you know that exfoliators should be chemical and not physical?

Create something pretty for your friends

Making your friends happy should be on your to-do list somewhere, right? How about you find some little DIY online that you can do for them? Or you can write them a pretty letter? I sometimes send my online friends little zines or little “Open when…” letters. Those are cheap to make but mean the world to a good friend. If you have the money you can also get them little friend gifts, create a care box or do some more expensive to-do’s. A thing I personally still have on my list is to make a shirt design for each of my friends, based on what they love. But that is incredibly time consuming and not everyone can do that. Maybe you love doing a specific creative thing and find a way to gift something related to that to your friends.

Block/Mute Topics & Accounts that make you feel bad

THIS is so incredibly important for your mental health and stress levels. Media nowadays plays with our fears a lot and not only on the level of TV. If you can’t regularly remind yourself of the fact that others have days that are as shitty as yours, you shouldn’t follow people that post only nice pictures with captions that mention no level of struggle in real life. I recently saw someone comment under a picture that they were laid off and their Instagram Story was full of positive pictures and happy faces. You never know the full story. Unsubscribe from accounts that don’t serve you, that harm you and mute topics that give you anxious feelings.

Check where you can save money

Look at your finances regularly. You can’t desire to become part of the upper-middle class if you don’t even check on your finances regularly. I get it, I also struggle to check in the 2-3 times that you actually SHOULD check your account per month, but look at the expenses of the last 3-6 months and look at what you could’ve just left out. Did you pay for Starbucks, even though you could’ve gotten a cheaper coffee at home or in a smaller café? Did you buy something that you didn’t end up using? Is there something in the last 30 days that you didn’t interact with much and could get a refund for? Is there a cheaper tool than the one you’re paying for? Which expenses were self care and which ones were “self care” (aka: Self care as an excuse to buy something)?

90 more productive things you can do…

Those were the first ten of 100 productive things to do. There are 90 more productive things you can do in my eBook with 100 productive things to do in it. You can get it by signing up to be part of my newsletter squad below:

Did you enjoy this post? Share it on Pinterest:

100 productive things to do by Rabea