Being able to dedicate time to specific tasks, completing them and ending your workday with a quality output can be an overall measure of your productivity. Similarly, if you have no methods in place for organization, time management, tracking tasks or prioritizing, your efficiency and productivity can be affected.
By making simple adjustments to your daily workflow one at a time, you can begin to see changes in your productivity. In this article, we offer 10 ways to be more productive. Time management and organizational skills can commonly be correlated to overall work productivity. When you implement strategies that support your productivity, you may have a higher chance of developing and improving your product output.
Time management is just one of the strategies you can use to increase your productivity. Also, you can apply organizational strategies such as prioritizing your tasks by order of importance and urgency.
The following seven tips offer ways you can increase your work productivity.
1. Focus On Your Biggest Tasks First
Focusing on your biggest and most time-consuming tasks before any other assignments can help you stay more focused than working on smaller and shorter tasks first. Consider planning your assignment list according to these tasks, where you may dedicate your time in the morning when you first arrive to work or at a time of day when you are most alert and energized.
2. Set Small Objectives
Rather than approach large goals that would require multiple outlets and longer amounts of time to achieve them, consider planning out small objectives throughout your day. Things like filing required paperwork, responding to those four client emails or compiling all the resources together that your team will need to complete a future project are small, daily objectives you can set and reach during your eight hours of work time. Similarly, you may use these short objectives as milestones to measure your progress toward a larger goal.
3. Focus on one task at a time
While you ultimately may be able to get things done when you juggle projects or tasks, focusing on one at a time may help you be more productive. When we concentrate on more than one activity at a time, we tend to use more of that time just for transitioning between tasks. This can result in some of the tasks remaining incomplete or being done at a lower quality than if each task had been a sole focus.
Additionally, concentrating on one task at a time until it is complete can help you increase your productivity because when you focus on one project at a time, you are setting a single objective at once instead of many.
4. Identify Your Most Productive Work Time
People vary in terms of when they are most productive. For example, are you a morning person or a night owl? It’s important to identify which hours of the day you feel most alert and attentive, and then dedicate those hours to your most important tasks. This is especially useful if you work remotely and can determine your schedule.
If you can’t create a schedule around your most productive work time, consider organizing your priorities in your current schedule based on which hours of your workday you feel most alert. Your productivity peaks are often in 90- to 120-minute intervals.
5. Stop Trying To Multitask
Doing more than one thing at a time may seem like the best way to get all of your tasks done, but it can hurt your productivity more than it helps. Multitasking simply doesn’t work, and when you do it, you end up wasting time, Kobel said.
6. Get Off Social Media.
Social media is a part of all of our daily lives. However, it would help if you were disciplined not to spend large parts of your day seeing what your friends thought of the latest movie or what they had for dinner last night. Many companies ban employees from accessing social media when they are at work, as it is a drain on productivity. If you are allowed to use social media at work, use it as a break for a few minutes, because if it becomes a regular habit, it can easily take over your day and impact the work you need to get done.
7. Take Regular Breaks
It can be tempting to avoid taking the time for a break, but when you neglect to give yourself a time-out for a few minutes, it can harm your overall productivity by resulting in fatigue or burn-out. If this happens, you may not have the energy or motivation to continue making progress. Consider planning out several short breaks during your workday. Most workplaces have a mandatory schedule with dedicated break times, so employees can take at least a five- to 10-minute break after every few hours of active work. These short breaks can allow you to recharge, clear your mind and get ready for the next task.
