How to Be More Organised and Productive in 2026 (Without Burning Out)

By Anna Hutton, co-founder and director of communications and behaviour change at Derby agency MacMartin

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It’s a New Year, and a new start - which, for many female business owners, means promising that this is the year they finally get more organised and more productive.

I know how important this is first-hand, having experienced the downsides of allowing a disorganised approach to my workload to spiral out of control in the past and having faced the stress and anxiety that comes with it.

That’s why being organised is a key part of my approach to running my business - a marketing agency I set up with my sister, Claire - and having a happy life at work and at home.

But I would be lying if I said I found it easy, or that I always practised what I preached. I’ve never been someone who can rely on discipline and willpower alone to stay motivated.

I am a self-saboteur who often spends my time in survival mode, trying everything possible to get through my workload without really understanding why some days feel impossible, and others feel fine.

I simply got used to living with the stress, unable to see the signs and then suffering physically as a result, developing shingles, ulcers, tonsillitis, eczema and extreme headaches.

What saved me was putting the emphasis on creating an environment conducive to productivity, with minimal distractions, and on having a strategy.

This gave me control and means I’m less reactive, less overwhelmed and generally more present at work and outside of it.

My strategy comes straight from my day job, which involves devising behavioural-change marketing campaigns to persuade people to make better choices or address harmful habits.

Inevitably, it involves understanding the psychology of behaviour change – what it is that keeps people making the same unhelpful decisions, why they find it difficult to change bad habits and what barriers they face when it comes to improving their lives or resisting temptation.

These principles can be applied to anybody, so I used them to create a strategy made up of five tactics which, when applied together, have changed both the way myself and the rest of the agency work.

The Five Behaviour Change Tactics That Improved Our Productivity

1. Action Planning: Turning Intentions into Micro-Missions

Action Planning is making a definite commitment to do something and naming the time.

Every Monday, I plan my week ahead in detail - hour by hour. I can think, “That’s Wednesday’s job,” or “Thursday is for that client,” instead of feeling like I have to solve the entire week all at once.

I block out all of my tasks into tiny appointments, making the time I’m going to allocate to them ridiculously specific and then colour-coding each one depending on how urgent they are.

This works because our brains cannot cope with abstract intentions. They need certainty and they love a micro-mission!

2. Problem Solving: Identifying What’s Really Holding You Back

If you’re struggling to get something done, what is it that’s holding you back?

Chances are it’s a problem that you hadn’t considered before. So many of us blame a lack of time for not doing everything on our list, but this is almost never the reason.

Often it’s because you’re too scared to open an email, you have a client who communicates poorly, or you are emotionally allergic to finances.

You need to understand this and fix the barrier. It’s the quickest behavioural hack there is.

3. Self-Monitoring Behaviour: Seeing What You’re Actually Doing

For us, it was down to Claire and me, not realising the scale and nature of the tasks we were doing and how long it was taking us to do them. When we monitored them, we realised that each of us were basically functioning as three employees and a part-time octopus.

We fixed this by delegating the minor tasks and focusing on those that made us money.

Try it – you’ll be surprised, and once you see it, you can fix it.

4. Habit Reversal: Breaking Unhelpful Productivity Patterns

Habit Reversal involves noticing the knee-jerk habits you’ve developed and consciously reversing them.

Do you check your emails too often? Do you try to squeeze in another meeting to an already-busy week?

Both of these can be harmful, so you need to take action. Batch-read your emails and be brave enough to book something further into the future instead of feeling you have to get it done as soon as possible.

5. Rewarding Completion: Using Dopamine to Build Better Habits

If you’ve done something, reward yourself. Don’t just finish one task and move straight onto the next. Have a nice coffee or a lunchtime walk.

On days when I’ve been really productive, I give myself permission to finish at 3pm.

Why These Productivity Techniques Work (The Neuroscience Explained)

Everything we’ve covered here is grounded in neuroscience. Scientists have discovered that when workload and pressures are high, it places a huge load on our prefrontal cortex, which is at the front of our brains and is where our detailed thinking and conscious decision-making takes place.

Our brains are designed to conserve energy, and so when there is too much for them to handle, they ration activity, defaulting to avoidance and procrastination, or even to saying yes to something without thinking it through.

This is decision fatigue, and because it leads to faulty decision-making, it can cause even more stress, which further compounds the problem.

Proper planning means our brains have less to deal with at any one time and breaks down large, complex tasks into smaller pieces.

Self-monitoring, meanwhile, creates feedback loops which enable our brains to learn and then adjust our behaviour, while rewards trigger dopamine, a neurotransmitter which is associated with motivation, learning and pleasure.

Our brains enjoy dopamine, so will crave more of the behaviour that led to the reward. This reinforces the behaviour and helps build habits.

How This Approach Creates Sustainable Productivity in 2026

Applying these tactics has changed the way I work – and the way our agency works too.

We deliberately break work into clear actions, build in feedback loops and add small pauses or rewards between tasks. I am always planning, questioning why I’m avoiding tasks, always self-monitoring and then rewarding myself too.

As a result, I’m calmer, more in control and more productive without burning out.

None of this is about unnecessary micro-planning or being rigid.

Instead, it’s understanding that these techniques sustain momentum over the long term and make high performance feel easier and more attainable – and will make sure your life and work reach new heights in 2026.