How to Improve Your Work Productivity
Despite how important it is to any company’s bottom line productivity in the workplace is rarely clearly outlined and defined. How quickly you can do a task will determine how much you can take, how much money you’ll make and whether or not the tasks you’ve been assigned get done on time or not. This is productivity.
As a result, many people are constantly looking to improve their productivity, even if they’ve been doing the same job for decades. Whether this is you or you’re currently learning the licensing requirements for Nevada attorneys to plan for a future career, you’ll likely find some applicable wisdom in the advice below.
Find Your Prime Time
You may have discovered that there are some points in the day where you feel incredibly focused and in-the-zone while you’re drained, unfocused or possibly even a bit grumpy at other points.
Those high points can be called your prime time or golden hours, and this is when you should focus on the most important parts of your job. Creative thinking, large projects and more should all be focused on at these times. You can do the smaller, less important tasks both before and after your prime time begins or ends.
Now that you know how to utilize your most focused hours, you need to discover them for yourself. For two weeks you should try to carefully pay attention to how you feel and write it down somewhere and then when you feel drained go ahead and document it alongside the date and time.
Once the prime time is over, document when it started and ended. Then, once you’ve done this for the full two weeks you’ll know how to reschedule your days to work better for you.
Set Small Goals
Most of your work days will be filled with small, menial tasks like answering emails or filing paperwork. Other times you’ll find yourself teamed up with various coworkers to complete a large and important task by a certain time. Tackling either workday is very easy if you set and focus on completing small goals.
Even large tasks usually consist of smaller pieces and completing these smaller parts could be your goals. For example, maybe your part in a large project is to fill out a spreadsheet with information. This spreadsheet can be broken down into chunks; maybe instead of focusing on the spreadsheet as a whole, make goals to fill in ten or fifteen cells at a time.
The point of these small goals is to put the project into perspective and rescue your doubts about getting it done. Don’t forget to let yourself feel happy for completing any goal, no matter how large, and you’ll find the motivation you may have otherwise been missing.
Keep Your Workspace Clutter-Free
Clutter in any location will make us feel claustrophobic and unmotivated. You may even find it more difficult to think when surrounded by unorganized clutter which is why the very best thing you can do to prevent these issues and help yourself is declutter your workspace.
You can still have decorations as they not only let you make your workspace feel like your own but also provide many benefits but don’t go overboard. Once your decorations start to impede your workflow you need to remove or replace them and you also need to keep your workspace organized at all times.
For example, instead of having a drawer full of loose supplies that you have to dig through whenever you need something, get and fill a drawer organizer. Where and how you store each item is up to you; you’ll be fine so long as the important things are where you need them and the less important ones are stored away but easy to access.
While keeping your physical workspace organized is easy to do most of the time and an obvious benefit at this point, you may not have considered that you also need to keep your digital workspace clear as well. Creating email labels and storing each old and new one in the appropriate one will prevent your inbox from being an overwhelming mess.
Adding new folders and putting documents saved on your computer into the correct ones will make it easier to find them when necessary. No matter how or where you organize, make sure you continue to use the system or you’ll find yourself back where you started in no time.
Take Small Breaks
You need to take a few small breaks during the workday to help keep your productivity up improve your creativity and prevent any burnout from occuring. What these breaks are will vary, but you’ll find yourself more refreshed upon returning to work.
For your lunch break, avoid eating at your desk and instead enjoy the break room, find a good spot outside or even go out to a restaurant. Being away from the work you’ve been doing all day will allow you to think about what you’ve already done, what comes next, how to improve your own workflow and allows you to come up with new ideas to name just a few benefits.
Other small breaks could include you stopping to grab and enjoy a cup of coffee to unwind for a bit or take a quick walk.
Much of the work in the modern day sees us staying sedentary in one spot for hours. This isn’t healthy for our bodies or minds and not making up for it by moving around throughout the day or increasing the amount of time you spend exercising can cause a wide range of medical issues.
You’ll also face some negative mental consequences such as increased stress and anxiety from a lack of exercise. While these breaks can’t last forever, one or two ten-to fifteen minute breaks in the day will see your productivity soar.
Do Your Best to Avoid Distractions
Modern life is full of all sorts of different distractions that span from constant social media notifications to short and quick videos just begging you to take a minute or two to watch them through.
Our attention is constantly being pulled from one thing to another in this love and while it may feel impossible to avoid it it isn’t as hard as it seems to stop being distracted so often. When you are working on an important task, wear a pair of headphones—even if you have nothing playing through them, they’ll help you focus on your work by toning out the noise around you.
If you don’t need your cell phone, keep it turned off and out of sight. If you do need it, try and keep it out of sight and as far out of reach as possible so that you’re not as tempted to start scrolling throughout the day.
