Productivity has become the hot topic among workplaces across the globe and for good reason, how can you maximise the amount of work you can do without it affecting your physical and mental health? There are plenty of ways but as usual the most effective are the most simplistic.
Learn to Say No
That’s the opposite of yes for those of you who are unfamiliar with the word. It’s so often the case that we are so eager to please our bosses and colleagues that we take on more than we can handle and as such burn out by about 3 o’clock. Well not anymore if you just master saying this tiny two letter word. By learning what you can and cannot do as well as what you will and won’t do, you’ll end up doing exactly the right amount. Know your limits.
Avoid Reading Messages
Messages are what other people want you to do. Now, while a lot of these are likely important and relate to the work you will be doing throughout the course of the day, many are not and you will waste plenty of time trawling through messages that really are only someone else’s concern. By avoiding messages you are setting your own agenda. (We’re not advising that you ignore those ‘urgent’ emails or emails from your boss!)
Eat The Frog
It’s fairly easy to picture what your worst task of the day is. We all do it, naturally; rank the day’s tasks from appealing to horrifying. Anything that falls under the latter category can get itself done in the mornings. If you wait for the early afternoon lull to focus on the thing that’s been giving you sleepless nights, you haven’t been doing it when you had all your energy from the morning sun. ‘Eat the frog’ as they say, get that bad boy out of the way and feel more relaxed to better combat the rest on your list.
Don’t Multitask
The best thing for productivity is focus and without it you will end up half completing a job or finishing it so poorly it would be better to start all over from scratch. When you multitask, you divide your energies and you divide them unevenly, you can never prioritise correctly if you are flitting between projects. If you value the quality of your work then dedicate time where you have no other distractions flying around in your brain
Set Reminders
There’s not being focused enough and then there’s being too focused. If you get lost in a project you may neglect other work that needs to be done. Such is the way with professionals that they always have something on the go so they may need little reminders from themselves about things they have coming up. Set a few reminders on each hour that’ll inform you of everything you need to do. Plan your time, essentially.
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