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10 free online courses you can take to learn to be more productive


Invest some time in one or more of these courses to help increase your productivity.WOCinTech Chat/flickr

Increasing your productivity is a goal that many busy professionals, parents, students, and entrepreneurs share.
Finding enough hours in the day to accomplish all of your tasks or goals can be difficult.
Sometimes the day has slipped away and you have accomplished little, and you don’t know why.
It is also frustrating when you know that part of the reason you cannot get everything done is because you are not organized enough or because you cannot manage your time well.
Invest some time in one or more of these courses to help increase your productivity.

1. Create a Perfect Morning Routine

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Platform: SkillShare
Course Duration: 12 lectures
Time: 1–3 min/lecture
Everyone’s mornings can be crazy, but they don’t have to be. Having a less stressful morning can make you more productive throughout the day. Waking up earlier to focus on things that you really enjoy can also help your personal growth and overall mental health. Creating the perfect morning routine can give you the tools to get started on the right foot every morning.
Find it here.

2. The Science of Everyday Thinking

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Platform: edX
Course Duration: 12 weeks
Time: 2 hours/week
Your “self-talk” has a lot of influence on your daily life. If you train yourself with methods to improve your everyday thinking, then you can increase your productivity. This edX course will also cover tricks and techniques to help you retain information longer. It also goes through the basic psychology of changing people’s minds and recognizing reality from falsehoods. All of these can be great tools for increase overall productivity.
Find it here. 

3. How to Create a Productivity System

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Platform: Highbrow
Course Duration: 10 days
Time: 5 minutes/day
Having a productivity system that works for you is perhaps your best tool to increase productivity. Once you have a system, you can spend less time organizing and planning and more time doing. Your system can also reduce your overall stress levels and those feelings over being overworked as well.
Highbrow’s course is tailored to those who do not have much free time — each portion of the course is delivered in small chunks directly to your e-mail.
Find it here. 

4. Journey into Minimalism

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Platform: Highbrow
Course Duration: 10 days
Time: 5 minutes/day
Minimalism is a way to escape the excesses of the world around us — the excesses of consumerism, material possessions, clutter, having too much to do, too much debt, too many distractions, too much noise. But too little meaning. It is a way of eschewing the non-essential in order to focus on what’s truly important, what gives our lives meaning, what gives us joy and value. Subscribe to this email course and learn how to become a minimalist, day by day.
Find it here.

5. How to Make Better Decisions with the Matrix

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Platform: Highbrow
Course Duration: 10 days
Time: 5 minutes/day
Prioritization is a huge challenge for busy individuals. With so many things demanding your attention, it can be difficult to decide which tasks should be tackled first and which one can sit on the backburner.
In this Highbrow class, a fun emoji helps you learn strategies to help you prioritize faster and smarter, so you can save valuable time.
Find it here.

6. Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects

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Platform: Coursera
Course Duration: 4 weeks
Time: 1 hour/week
Learning information faster can help you be more productive. Memory techniques, illusions of learning, and learning best practices are all covered in this course. It even provides techniques to deal with procrastination.
This course from Coursera offers practical techniques that you can use at work, school, or anywhere where you need to learn a new subject or task.

7. Sit Less, Get Active

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Platform: Coursera
Course Duration: 3 weeks
Time: 1.5 hour/week
Your mental alertness and focus are affected by your activity level throughout the day. Sitting in one spot too long saps energy and creativity, and can have a negative effect on your overall mood. Once you learn how to sit less and be more active, you will have more energy to be your most productive self throughout the day. This course helps you monitor your current movement and set healthy goals for yourself.
Find it here.

8. Introduction to Time Management

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Platform: Alison
Course Duration: 1–2 hours
At the end of the day, do you ever sit and wonder what you did all day? You were working, but it seemed like you didn’t get anything done. Perhaps you need to focus more on time management to increase your productivity. This online course focuses on prioritization, distractions, interruptions, and working efficiently.
Find it here.

9. Effective Time Management — Get 10X More Done in Less Time

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Platform: Udemy
Course Duration: 9 lectures
Time: 5–7 min/lecture
Time management is especially difficult for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Perhaps that is why there is a course specifically tailored to this audience. Instead of managing time, this Udemy course is focused on deciding which tasks are “high value” tasks, so you get more of a return for the time that you have invested.
Find it here.

10. Achieve More in Less Time Using SMART Goals

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Platform: Udemy
Course Duration: 10 lectures
Time: 3 min/lecture
This Udemy course focuses on goal setting as a means to be more productive. Having your own goals helps keep you attentive and motivated to get more done in the limited time that you have. It also helps you learn to evaluate yourself when compared to the goals that you have set for yourself.
This course may also be helpful for those who want to teach others about the importance of goal setting and productivity.
Find it here.
Artem Zavyalov is the co-founder of Highbrow – a learning platform that sends people quick little email lessons and helps them develop daily learning habits.
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