What are the main reasons that impact your productivity at work? Let's take a look at a typical work day. How many times do you get interrupted by your colleagues who want to pick your brain on something. Or how many times does your leader interrupt you for status updates? How many times do you check your phone or your smart watch? How often do you receive a text, a video, or a mime? This article will list the 4 habits that impact your productivity at work.
Accepting Interruptions
If your colleagues ask for your help, do you feel obliged to help them? Or do you schedule time in your calendar to respond to their queries? Does your boss interrupt you while you are in the middle of something important? Do you leave everything to listen to his concerns?
Interruptions are external stimuli that we don't plan for. Things such as unplanned discussions and ad-hoc work requests are the primary interruptions that shift our focus during the day. As a result, it takes longer to get things done. We need to try our best to limit these interruptions as much as possible, even if it means, saying 'No' to your peers.
Encouraging Distractions
How many hours or minutes do you spend on your phone every day on personal things at work ?
Distractions are actions that we knowingly take to delay or avoid work. Things such as texting on your phone, long phone calls, reading or replying to social media posts, tracking stock prices, checking your fitbit or smartwatch, browsing for deals or coupons etc. are some of the main distractions that we have at work. These distractions reduce our focus on the task at hand and must be minimized.
Multi-tasking
A common myth is that people who can multi-task are high-performers. However, it is just the opposite. The fact is that we are not good at executing multiple complex tasks at the same time. When we say we are multi-tasking, we are actually switch-tasking which means that we switch between one task to another. Switch-tasking slows you down as you spend more time and effort to re-focus on the first task once you have switched to the second one.
Instead, focus on completing the task that you are currently working on, before starting a new one.
Procrastination
Spending your time on an unimportant task to delay the start of the most important task is procrastination. The main causes of procrastination are lack of focus, fear of failure, or excessive perfectionism. The best way to overcome procrastination is to break down your goal into smaller tasks, know the bigger purpose or the outcome, overcome your fears, and get started. Stop procrastinating today to achieve higher productivity at work.
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