In the frantic pace of today’s busy professional life, productivity is of paramount importance for businesses as well as individuals. The burden of family responsibility and professional obligation sometimes makes us wish there could more hours in a day than just 24. Therefore, being productive is the only option that can offset the haphazardness that mars our daily lives. As soon as you get your workplace, you have to swing between meetings, phone calls, emails, urgent pieces of work etc like a ping pong ball. The fact is in any given day, responsibilities and distractions are endless, but hours are limited.
So how to make your every day productive?
Well, you cannot add to or remove from the finite time that nature has provided to you. What you need to do instead is something that has greater value. You have to be capable enough to discipline your mind and develop new habits to be efficient and productive. Getting accustomed to the positive changes that you bring in your lifestyle will ultimately give you a greater sense of control over your day. With this approach, you will bring improvement in every aspect of your life, and you can stay productive when working long hours, or even after that.
Here is how you can develop a routine that will make your every day a highly productive day:
Avoid procrastination
Procrastination is the biggest productivity killers because the longer you will wait to complete your task, the more difficult it will get. Not only that any task done like this lacks productivity and quality necessary to succeed. It is like a psychological barrier between you and your work, where you keep telling yourself that one day you are going to work with great alacrity and timing. But the day never comes. Procrastination can cost you your job also. According to a study conducted on 10,000 U.S. employees, it was found that the average employee was wasting 2.09 hours per day on useless activities. With $39,795 as the average salary of those employees, the total cost was found to be $10,396 per year, per employee because of the lost hours. Thus, your willpower should be strong enough to get over procrastination.
Delegate your tasks
Sometimes there are other factors (internal as well as external) that hamper your productivity like stress, tiredness or depression. So, one effective way of getting rid of stress-related issues and increasing productivity is to delegate your tasks. At times you are laced with barrage of tasks and sub-tasks, and in such situations you tend to lose your focus and energy. Delegating, however, will help you get your energy back and you can better focus on more important tasks. For that you should know the art of delegation because if you delegate well, you can become productive as well as efficient within no time. But the necessary condition is you should have someone else who has the necessary information or expertise to complete the task. If you have people around you who can perform your tasks, just convince them that they are getting an opportunity to grow their skills.
Get rid of distractions
Distractions are everywhere, and every now and then you get distracted without even realizing it. So to become more productive, you have to minimize them as much as you can. Social media, for instance, is the biggest distracter with which your productivity plunges. In addition to that emails, instant messages, Chabot, and smartphones also impact your productivity. Distractions interrupt your focus and attention span needed for the matter at hand. Due to such interruptions, your accuracy also gets decreased. Thus, in order to eliminate distractions, you should kill instant notifications on your phone and computer, don’t indulge in unnecessary chats, and stay away from social media.
Automate
This is the age of automation and artificial intelligence. In other words, this is the beginning of “smart age” where you have to be smart in whatever you do. Therefore, automation is increasingly becoming the necessary element for a more productive life. How you can save precious time by automation? You can direct debit your bills, program a cleaning schedule in your calendar, automate your social accounts, and streamline different processes etc. There are a variety of apps and software available that can assist you in automating things. As a result, you start living a more productive lifestyle.
Don’t fall on the trap of multitasking
For many, multitasking amounts to doing things with a superhuman caliber. The fact, however, is multitasking is not what it sounds – that is, doing multiple tasks at one time. It is actually impossible. For example, right now you are reading this piece only, not reciting Shakespearean plays simultaneously. While indulging in multitasking, you actually perform task-switching, and studies have shown that whenever people try to switch tasks, their productivity gets reduced to 40%. As a simple logic, if you try to do many tasks at a time, you will end up doing none. In fact, it is your focus and concentration that helps you in finishing your tasks. In other words, multitasking forces you to split your concentration into as many tasks as you are going to attempt.
Get better organized
Many research studies agree on the fact that we tend to work better when our environment is clean and organized. Being thronged by unnecessary clutter here and there is antithesis of productivity. Not only in your personal sphere, but being organized at your workplace will bring much needed calm and productivity in your life. You need to streamline your daily chores, sleep routine and other personal or professional things. Getting better organized is also helpful for the whole team. Just take the following steps to get organized:
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- Prioritize your tasks, with most important task at the top and so on. You will be better able to allocate your time.
- Note down important things whenever possible
- De-clutter your workplace regularly
- Keep back-ups for everything
- Start keeping things in their proper places
Bottom line
Productivity is very important if you want to succeed in your personal as well as professional life. Every person’s motivation level is different, but the key for productivity is to become extremely discipline and manage your time well.
About the author:
Marie Johnson is a freelance writer and a blogger. She’s an expert in writing about employee management, productivity, performance evaluation, and employee relations.
