Every company is always looking for new ways to boost productivity and increse results. As an Employee or a business owner, This applies to you.
While most companies and individual wait till the end of the month to take stuck and see how productive they’ve been, it takes too long to see if you are being productive unless your plans or target are not met.
A better way to boost productuvity is not by doing more but by focusing on the less we have to and doing them well. This means removing the daily habits that over time, compounds to ruin productivity.
If you have any of the habits beow, making consciuos effort to start correcting them one after the other is how you start making a more productive use of your time
7 ways you’re Hurting Your Own Productivity
1. Checkin your emails frequently and at the wrong time: Waking up and checking your emails first thing in the morning is a perfect way to make your day all about someone’s agenda. Nothing in your inbox is important when you have not set your cause for the day.
A close second to this habit is checking your emails every 2 minute, looking for something that would distract you, so you don’t have to face what you are doing. The emails you receive are not as important as the things you set out to do on your to-do list.
When you are done working on your most important tasks, you can check your emails and reply the most important ones. What if you are waiting for an important email? Checking every minute would not help you either.
If it’s urgent, You’d be called.
2. Having a disorganized desk: What’s the best way to boost your anxiety in a work environement? Looking for something important in a pile of cluster.
When you have so many things on your mind, you cannot concentretae and when your desk is disorganised, it makes it worse and keeps you from being productive
Having a clean and organised desk helps improve productivity, you get bonus points if you can take this practice and apply it to your living space and your mental health. Big W’s are guaranteed when you declutter.
3. Sitting for too long vs Improper sitting position: Most of our working hours nowadays are spent sitting. The average adult now sits more than at any other time in history. Sedentary jobs have increased 83% since 1950 according to the American Heart Association.
You know that sitting too much is bad and that’s why you’ve been advised to move after you have sat for an hour or 45 minutes to allow blood circulation. But while you sit, your sitting position can help increase or decrease your productivity.
If you slouch when you sit or you’re like me who’s bum is at the edge of your sit with your neck struggling to see your screen, you know how tiring this gets even if it looks comfy at first.
Sitting with a straight spine can help you increase productivity. You don’t want your body aching and fatigued from sitting too long or sitting in a wrong position.
4. Make sure you multitask: This is a killer most people ignore. Going from one task to the other does nothing but harm how productive you are.
Infact, studies has shown that multitasking reduces your IQ by up to 10 points. The best way to make sure what you’re working on doesn’t get done or gets done on time is to juggle more than one task at a time
5. Keep notifications on/Check every notification: “Beep”, whatsaap message, “Beep” – twitter notification, “beep”- someone like your post… and it goes on and on(Social Media never sleeps)
Each “beep” you get helps you lose a little concentration and instant gratification means you’re eager to see who messaged you.
Now, you’re stuck in a “scrolling loop” for another 30 minutes before something brings you back to the task at hand.
It’s even worse, now you can link your phone to your laptop – just to make sure you dont miss out on your distractions… sorry Notifications
This is a good way to make sure you get nothing done. Constantly being distracted by notifications from your phones while you work can decrease your productivity alot.
You can work using the pomodoro techniue – 25 minutes of deep focused work, then 5 minutes break(you can scroll if you want but for 5 minutes)
I’m sure if you dont pick up your phone for 25 minutes, no one would die(or even notice)
6. Allow other peoples take your time: An open door policy is mandatory if you wish to remain unproductive.
Being distracted while you work by people coming in and out of your office affects your productivity.
After that conversation, you find it hard to pick up momentum from when you stopped.
Sone long enough, you would end up spending the day doing nothing.
7. Long ass to-do list: You should focus on accomplishing 3-5 high priority tasks daily.
Having a long to do list just scares you into inaction and the more things you leave undone on your to-do list, the easier it gets to skip out on important tasks
Start each day prioritising the highest value tasks. When those are done, you can focus on the least important tasks. You know what is “important?” – It is usually the one task in your day that you would like to “procrastinate on” – The biggest ugliest frog you’re forced to eat each day according to best-selling Author Brian Tracy in
“Eat That Frog”
Once you get that out of the way, every other thing looks easy. You already slayed your Goliath for the day.
We hope you are more productive and these tips help you become the best version of yourself.
Last month, we had some amazing projects. You can check them out here