6 Ways to Be More Productive in the last half of 2025 (Without Burning Out)

If you're a team leader or business owner, your to-do list probably looks more like a hydra - every time you cross one thing off, two more appear. The tools we use to stay productive are supposed to help, but too often, they add noise instead of clarity.

Mid way through 2025, the productivity game is shifting. It’s less about doing more and more about doing what matters, with intention.

Here are the six strategies I’ve seen make the biggest impact for leaders and founders - especially those juggling people, products, and priorities.

1. Protect your FOCUS time

Time blocking is one of the simplest, most effective productivity strategies around - and yet most people still don’t do it consistently.

Here’s how it works: You carve out a dedicated block of time in your calendar to focus on one meaningful task - no multitasking, no meetings, no context-switching. Just deep, uninterrupted work on something that actually moves the needle for your team or your business.

If you want to be both a productive AND strategic leader then start by blocking at least one 45-minute session a day to do this. That might not sound like much, but in a world full of Slack pings and back-to-back Zoom calls, it’s enough to make real progress if you treat it like a non-negotiable.

Here’s what to do:

Open your calendar and create a 45-minute recurring appointment every weekday. Name it something like “Deep Focus” or “Strategy Time.” Try to schedule it for a time when your cognitive capabilities typically feel at their strongest.

Set it to busy so others don’t book over it. Make sure it shows up in your daily task planner (like Briefmatic) so you see it alongside everything else you're juggling.

Use it for your most cognitively demanding work: writing, decision-making, creative thinking — not email triage. Treat this time block like it’s a meeting with your most important client — because it is: your future self.

2. Quit the fake urgency game

Let’s be honest: most things that feel urgent… aren’t.

One of the biggest time-sucks for leaders and teams is the constant pull of “quick syncs,” “status catch-ups,” or “just 15 minutes” meetings that eat up hours every week. And when everything is treated like it needs an instant reply or a meeting, actual deep work gets squeezed out.

So what’s the power move for the rest of 2025?

Push more communication to asynchronous channels and do it in a way that still fosters collaboration and alignment.

Here’s how:

What does “async” actually mean?

Async doesn’t mean slower. It means thoughtful, documented, and flexible communication that doesn’t require everyone to be online at the same time. This could be:

• A Word Doc, Notion doc or Google Doc where you have taken the time to write down your though and then us comments (assigned as tasks to the relevant SME) and a request for async feedback
• A Briefmatic task card with context, ownership, and a due date
• A short Loom video where say what's on your mind, provide context and ask for feedback and specify the preferred reply channel and timeline.
  
  

How to lead async-first (without killing momentum)

1. Set the expectation
Make it clear to your team: “Not every question needs a meeting.” Model this yourself. Instead of defaulting to “Can we jump on a quick call?” try “I’ve dropped my thoughts in this doc and tagged you in some comment, can you add yours by tomorrow?”

2. Be clear, not brief
The biggest risk with async is ambiguity. Be ultra-clear in your asks. This makes async actually faster, because fewer back-and-forths are needed.

• What’s the decision needed?
• Who owns it?
• By when?

3. Default to public
Use shared channels (shared docs are preferable) rather than DMs. This builds context and avoids knowledge silos which is crucial for keeping everyone aligned without a meeting.

4. Make collaboration visible
Use tools like Briefmatic to assign tasks, track discussion, and create a shared record of work in motion. This way, async collaboration doesn’t feel like radio silence — it feels like momentum you can see.

The outcome?
You’re not just freeing up your calendar but you’re building a team that thinks critically, communicates clearly, and values everyone’s time. Async is as efficient as it's respectful.

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3. Fewer things, done better

This one’s simple, hard, and game-changing: Prioritize the right work over more work.

Most of us default to doing whatever feels most urgent or easily doable — the low-hanging fruit. But real productivity comes from choosing the work that matters, not just the work that screams the loudest.

Two ideas that help cut through the noise:

The Eisenhower Method:
Popularized by Dwight Eisenhower (and later made famous by Stephen Covey), this matrix separates your tasks into four categories:

• Urgent + Important → Do now
• Important but Not Urgent → Schedule it
• Urgent but Not Important → Delegate it
• Not Urgent + Not Important → Delete it
  
  

Simple? Yes. But brutally effective. It forces you to look past the firehose and choose with intention. Learn more about it and how to use it effectively here.

The Highlight Principle (from Make Time):
Instead of trying to “get it all done,” pick one highlight task each day — the one thing you’ll be most proud to have finished. That becomes your anchor. Everything else is a bonus.

“Instead of being reactive all day, start your morning by asking: What do I want to make time for today?” – The Make Time Dorks

Learn more about the Highlight principle here.

Why a task planner helps:

This is where a smart task planner like Briefmatic shines. Rather than juggling tasks across Slack, Gmail, Notion, and mental post-it notes, Briefmatic pulls everything into one unified view so you can actually apply frameworks like Eisenhower or Highlighting in one place.

• Tag or flag your Highlight for the day
• Drag tasks into priority columns like “Do Today,” “Next Up,” or “Later”
• Sort by urgency and importance without needing a second system
• Use the Scheduler tab to time-block the “Important but Not Urgent” stuff before it becomes a crisis

The best task management system is the one that helps you see everything, choose deliberately, and follow through consistently. In 2025, that’s not a spreadsheet or handwritten todo list, it’s a system like Briefmatic.

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4. Build a “second brain” you trust

Still relying on sticky notes, starred emails, or Slack DMs as a to-do list? Stop.

Offload everything into one system that is centralized, easy to update, and frictionless to review.

Why it matters: research shows that when you externalize your tasks and ideas, something cognitive scientists call “offloading, you free up your brain’s working memory and reduce mental fatigue. One study even found that delegating tasks to external tools like to-do lists significantly boosts focus and problem-solving ability (Risko & Dunn, 2015).

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
– David Allen, Getting Things Done

There’s also a correlation between systems like this and high performance: McKinsey & Harvard Business Review found that the executives who were happiest with their time weren’t the ones working longer hours, they were the ones who used trusted systems to plan and manage their weeks.

A second brain gives your real brain the breathing room to think, lead, and make better decisions.

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5. Design your day around your energy

The most productive people aren’t optimizing minutes, they’re optimizing energy.

Are you sharp in the morning? That’s your deep work window. Feel sluggish at 2pm? Do admin or take a break. Aligning your most important work with your natural rhythms beats any hack.

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6. Use one system to see everything — and actually act on it

By far the biggest drag on modern productivity is fragmentation. Your tasks are in Gmail. Your team chat is in Slack. Your project updates are in Notion, and your “real” to-do list is in your head.

That’s why the most effective leaders use a centralized task planner that brings it all together.

👉 That’s exactly what we built Briefmatic to do.

Briefmatic pulls your tasks from tools like Gmail, Slack, Google Docs, Figma, and Notion and organizes them into one clean view. Then it helps you prioritize, schedule, and stay on top of what matters all from one place.

No more forgetting what you promised in a comment or scrambling to find the one starred email that actually mattered.

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The Bottom Line

Productivity in 2025 isn’t about doing more, it’s about clearing the fog so you can do what matters, better. And it starts with the systems you trust, the boundaries you protect, and the tools that support your best work.

If you’re ready to stop juggling and start focusing,
👉 Start your free trial of Briefmatic today

Let’s make this your most focused year yet.

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