Every day you go to work to get more done. By midday, you’ve given up on lunch, and you’re calling home to tell your family to eat dinner without you. Why are you unable to complete everything? A few minor adjustments can significantly increase your productivity, allowing you to work fewer hours each week while producing more.
1. Learn to Prioritize Tasks
Workers spend most of their time doing unnecessary tasks with little consequence. For instance, is responding to 150 emails genuinely helpful, or are you wasting your time? Make a list of the tasks you perform that result in quantifiable outcomes, and reserve 80% of your time for those tasks. Spend 20% of your time on time-consuming activities like returning calls and responding to emails. This priority ensures that the essential things get done.
2. Create Systems for Common Tasks
You probably perform a lot of monotonous jobs. Office suites like Outlook, Word, and Excel provide options to automate repetitive tasks as your brain is much more capable of switching between related tasks than it is of switching between unconnected ones, group related tasks together, such as writing assignments, question-and-answer sessions, or planning sessions.
3. Avoid multitasking
Although many workers believe that multitasking increases productivity, studies show that multitasking decreases productivity. The brain has difficulty switching between tasks that are not linked, as was already explained. Furthermore, multitasking makes it difficult for you to concentrate on any task, which extends the time it takes you to finish each task and increases the chance that you will make mistakes.
4. Tackle the Hardest Tasks Early in the Work Day
Take on the challenging tasks first. First, you’re at your freshest, and second, the rest of the day appears more manageable when the challenges are overcome. According to studies, successful people tend to handle the most challenging tasks before handling others. Imagine how easy your afternoon will go if those dreadful reports aren’t hanging over your head.
5. Don’t Skip Your Breaks
By skipping breaks, employees can jam more work into the day. Breaks allow for a brief period of mind-wandering, which is essential for solving creative problems. Also, breaks will enable you to refuel your body and move around, increasing oxygen flow.