We all have periods when we don’t have the energy for anything, especially when it is a young mother who has work or study assignments in addition to taking care of the baby. Lack of motivation and laziness reduces one’ s productivity and leads to procrastination. In most cases, a person deliberately postpones completing a task simply because there is no desire to do it.
In this article, we will talk about what actions are killing your productivity, as well as tell you what habits can raise it, and what tips will help to improve it.
What causes a decrease in productivity?
When doing something, the first thing that matters is concentration. Distracted by a conversation with a colleague, by reading a message, or watching a funny video, you reduce your productivity because the focus of your attention goes not on the work, but another action.
The foundation of productivity problems includes a number of essentially meaningless actions that each of us performs day after day without even realizing their detrimental effect on our lives. Here are a few examples of these actions.
Time in your smartphone
Almost everyone is used to keeping the phone close to him during the day. And when we have a free minute, we reach for our smartphone out of habit to check social networks, watch the news or enjoy beautiful photos from vacation. We end up wasting our valuable time on these activities.
The phone is a productivity killer.
To deal with this problem, try to plan your time. For example, train yourself to pay attention to the phone once every two hours and no more than 10 minutes.
Also, there are different applications for concentration, they are easy to find and download. An app will keep you from using your phone for a certain, set time. This will really help you concentrate on the task at hand.
Tight meeting schedules
The sheer number of meetings and calls can reduce your productivity. If possible, discuss this problem with your supervisor and see if you can distribute meetings and calls in some other way. It would also be wonderful if you make a survey of your colleagues regarding this part of the job. If meetings and calls are needed to announce new information, a great alternative is a work chat or mailing list. Believe us, this will have a very good effect on your productivity!
Make sure you don’t need to learn anything
Professionals often fall into this hook. When a person has full confidence in mastering a certain job skill, it seems that they no longer need to learn anything new in that area. Such an attitude is an obstacle to finding new methods of solving assigned work tasks, which in turn negatively affects productivity.
It is worth remembering that everything in this world is subject to change and development. To continue to be a professional in your business, you need to keep learning new things, thereby developing your field of work. If this is difficult for you, you can always turn to writing my essay service that will help you with advice and solutions to challenging assignments.
Lots of open tabs
If you are a fan of opening many tabs in your browser, you have a habit that is very detrimental to your productivity. And that’s because each page interferes with your concentration. Although this option makes your work more comfortable, it creates a lot of distractions. It’s worth giving up this habit.
Small things to do
Now we perform the assigned work task, in 3 minutes we already make a grocery list for the evening, later begin to choose a gift for the birthday of a friend, in the end at all we forget what we were doing. Take up everything that comes into our head – a bad habit. To improve your productivity, make a list of things you have to do after work, it will make your life easier.
Improving Productivity
There are many tips for improving productivity. Many successful people use them and share with us different techniques and rules that can positively influence our work efficiency. Here are a few examples of such techniques.
Three Tasks
Most people plan every day by making a to-do list and goals, it helps to be more organized. But if you do not like to live by a plan or you simply do not have time to plan, there is a very interesting and easy rule that will miraculously affect your productivity.
Take 5 minutes each morning to write down the three most important tasks for the coming day. Throughout the day, concentrate on completing this shortlist.
This simple habit has a very positive impact on productivity.
The 20/80 rule
This law looks something like this: 20% effort = 80% result, and the remaining 80% effort = 20% result.
All of the things that are not particularly important should be done at a time when your productivity is low. For example, you have a very hard time getting up in the morning. Spend that time on easier tasks. Do difficult and serious tasks at the time when your performance is the highest. Properly prioritizing your work, you improve your productivity!
A diet of information
In today’s world, it’s very easy to overload yourself with unnecessary information, which subsequently causes sleep disorders, reduced reaction time, and absent-mindedness. If all of this sounds familiar to you, it’s worth trying an information diet. Just sit down and think, do you need to read these newspapers, follow this blogger, study this email? The same goes for television and social media.
Learn to filter the information, and discard the unnecessary and the unimportant, and you will see that your life is better and more productive!
All on schedule
Almost every successful person gets up early to focus on the things that are important to them. It’s not that difficult. There are far fewer distractions in the morning than at any other time of day. We all have time to work and time to rest. It’s important to learn how to draw a clear line between the two. This is where planning helps a lot.
We hope that these tips will help you to be more productive.