Do you ever wonder where time flies when you are not productive enough?
Here are some good working habits of highly productive people that can turn your lazy days into proactive ones for career advancement.
Productivity is not getting an ample amount of tasks done in a short period. Instead, it is achieving maximum efficiency with high impact results in a short amount of time.
You can look at productive habits this way; an hour of efficient, focused work is better than 10 hours of busy, however, unproductive work. Thus, when being productive, less is more.
Moreover, in this age of rapid advancements, productivity is the key to individual and collective development. Here we have some quick tips for you to help your productivity soar.
The First Habit: Prioritize
The key to productivity is prioritizing your daily tasks. When you start your day, make it a point to list down every small task that you have to complete and prioritize the important ones. Make sure you ask yourself if spending time on a particular task is worth it and if the energy you spend on it would bring you closer to the results you wish to achieve.
Here is a simple trick to prioritize;
- Is the task important? – Then go for it
- Is the task unimportant? – Then cut it out
In your quest to be productive and to lead a productive day, be ruthless and very particular about how you spend your time.
Thus, develop a focus matrix that would help you be proactive and sustain long-term productivity. Do not just go through the tasks to tick off the to-do list; go through the task to get the Most Important One’s done.
Develop a habit of giving the task the amount of time it deserves to yield maximum results worth the energy you put into the task.
The Second Habit: Get Rid Of Distractions
Distractions are the pit-stops to your productivity; they halt your progress and bring you away from what could have been a productive day. Even when you draft down a to-do list, you can be subject to distractions, because let’s face it, we humans are creatures of habit and cannot stay too long without scrolling through some pages on our social media accounts.
To keep the distractions from keeping you away from productivity, keep a list of distractions you need to avoid. Distraction not only destroys your time and energy, but it also affects you psychologically. According to Stanford neuroscientist Russ Poldrack, switching between tasks can make you feel exhausted and disoriented. It, in turn, triggers your brain to release a stress hormone called cortisol that often leads to aggression and impulsive behavior.
Thus distractions are a source of underproductivity as well as damaging behavior.
A study from the University of California-Irvine titled ‘ The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress’ revealed that the time spent on distractions is usually trivial; however, it has more profound recovery implications; “After only 20 minutes of interrupted performance, people reported significantly higher stress, frustration, workload, effort, and pressure”.
For your work to be productive, get rid of distractions.
The Third Habit: Develop Your 80/20 Pareto Principle
Vilfredo Pareto developed the 80/20 principle, justifying that 80 percent of productivity comes from 20 percent of the causes. It displays an unequal relationship in terms of its mathematical origin. Nevertheless, it is quite an efficient tip to follow in terms of productivity.
For productivity to boost effectively, find the tasks that have the most impact of nature among all your tasks. This way, your productivity is focused on 20 percent of the Most Important Tasks that require 80 percent of your time and energy.
For example, in business, 20 percent of the essential assets are sustained in every aspect to improve overall productivity.
Dr. Joseph Juran’s ‘the vital few and the trivial many’ was also developed upon the practical implications of the 80/20 rule.
Thus, focus on the 20 percent of tasks vital to your productivity and spend 80 percent of your skills and capabilities improving upon those tasks.
The Fourth Habit: Take Strategic Breaks to Sharpen the Saw
No matter how productive you are, it is essential to take a small break every once in a while. A routine 5-minute break every 1 hour is essential to improve levels of productivity.
When you perform your important tasks, make sure you take a few minutes off every hour to recharge and boost your energy levels.
Various break-taking techniques can help improve your productivity.
One of the most effective ones is Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro Technique; In this strategic break-taking technique, you focus entirely on one task for a specific set amount of time and then take a break for a smaller amount of time. However, one crucial aspect of utilizing the technique is to focus unwaveringly on the task that you are performing despite any distractions that may come your way. Then, after working rigorously, when you take a small break of a few minutes, you can tend to the distractions, but only within the dedicated break time.
Taking such strategic breaks can help increase your productivity dramatically while your mind and body have time to recover and rest.
Another strategy is to set small rewards for yourself that you award yourself with after completing a sufficient amount of work.
The Fifth Habit: Set A Timeline And Practice A Proactive Attitude
Tasks, significantly bigger ones, can take up a lot of time. Even when you prioritize the tasks according to their importance, the amount of time required to complete them may come across as an obstacle. Thus, prioritized tasks must be set to complete in a timeline.
A timeline of tasks helps you stay focused and keep the end goal in near sight. Develop a focused timeline to increase your productivity;
- What are the tasks on your to-do lists?
- How much time do you require to complete each task?
- Which task needs to be done by the end of this week?
- Which task needs to be done by the end of this month?
- Which tasks require a sufficient amount of time, and what are the steps you are taking towards achieving those tasks?
All these questions are crucial to developing a timeline and essential to keep track of the time you spend on each task.
Moreover, if you cannot keep up with the timelines, make sure you develop a proactive attitude towards the circumstances that happen as a result of it. Take decisions that have the potential to help you rather than stunt your productivity altogether. Like Stephen Covey says,
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions”.
The Sixth Habit: Create Your Very Own Flow Environment
One of the best things about working towards productivity is that you can create and set your surroundings to benefit your results. Ask yourself these questions;
Does your work environment inspire you? Does your workspace at your home office help you work calmly? Do your surroundings create an atmosphere where you feel you can be productive?
If ‘Yes, then bravo! You are benefiting substantially from your environment. And if your answer is a ‘No,’ then to improve productivity, you first need to improve your environment.
Many small ways can help improve the conditions of where you work. For example, a simple house plant can make you feel calm, while bright, neatly organized ornaments can help you feel vibrant. With an aura that helps you improve your mood and energy, you have greater chances of improving your productivity.
The Seventh Habit: Utilize The Time Pockets
Time pockets are small amounts of spare time that you have between activities. Now you must stare out the window while on the bus or train, going to or from places. However, you can utilize these time pockets to get trivial tasks done on the go. For example, while you are waiting for a meeting, you can edit that piece of writing you had been working on or ponder over your to-do list and tick off the task that you have the time and efficiency for in that particular moment.
Time pockets help get a lot of work done that would have taken time out of your set timeline of other, more important activities.
During these time pockets, you can watch that informative video waiting in your downloads, have a healthy snack, or even plan out the rest of the day.
The Eighth Habit: Automate Tasks
Technology is the most efficient and effective of tools. Using technology-based solutions in your daily tasks instead of doing everything manually saves you both irrelevant costs and time. It takes a fraction of a time to set up the automation of many tasks and pays off well in the future.
For example, scheduling emails that need to be sent and then scheduling meetings and other tasks as per the information in the email. Moreover, it can set up reminders so that you do not miss important details of any task that you have to carry out.
This way, your productivity can increase at a splendid rate. However, it is also essential to have time pockets offline to admire the world around you and add to the positive flow environment that helps improve your growth in both professional and personal life.
In striving to improve productivity, these habits can prove to be both practical and efficient. Thus helping you sustain your development through strategic, positive ways of dealing with daily tasks.
