Even if you don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, it’s always nice to start with good habits. Here are the three tips that always work if you want to get more productive.

Start early

While it can be delightful to be in bad for an extra fifteen minutes (or even an hour), this seriously kills your productivity. Get up early and start immediately. That doesn’t mean you have to start working immediately, but just means you have to do something productive. Run, read a book or the news, make a nice breakfast, write, meditate, answer your emails whatever – you can probably think of something yourself that works best for you to help you kickstart the day. Just don’t do anything like watching a stupid tv show or mindlessly scrolling your Facebook feed.

Don’t work too long

It’s strange that a lot of people know this, but almost nobody acts on it. People are only productive for about two to four hours. It’s completely unnecessary to try to do some high-concentration work for eight hours a day. Of course, not everyone has the luxury to decide to work less than that a day, but maybe it’s good to try to rearrange your planning. Make sure you have four hours a day for works that requires a lot of concentration or creativity, and keep the rest of the day for work that’s relatively simple and doesn’t require so much attention.

Shut off that phone

Getting messages from your friends, family, loved ones and colleagues can distract a lot. That’s why it’s wise to shut off your phone during work. Stop making excuses, you really don’t need all those messages. How often do you get a message that is actually important and cannot wait for a couple of hours? Right, never.

And in case you really need your phone for your work: consider getting a second one which you only use for work. This actually has a second benefit, because you can switch this one off during your free time, so you won’t get any work calls or messages outside of work time. Two birds, one stone.