Before we start the list, there needs to be a disclaimer. The more you focus on productivity, the more you will have to divorce yourself from the humanity of your staff. Rest assured, when managing a corporate culture, the more that is made of productivity gains, the less engaged many of your employees may become. It is essential to your business’ success that you find a balance between prioritizing productivity and promoting staff-aimed initiatives to keep your production staff happy and turnover low.
Track Time and Limit Time Taken on Tasks
You may think you are good at gauging how much time you spend on your typical tasks, but really only a small percentage are. By tracking how much time you take on your daily tasks, you may find out that you spend too much time obsessing over your email, or you may spend an exorbitant amount of time swiping through your social media accounts. Knowing how you can save time is a great first step in actually saving some.
Take Regular Breaks
You’re probably thinking that taking breaks works counter to being more productive, but taking scheduled breaks can help improve focus and concentration. This is especially true if you are working on large, time-consuming tasks.
Set Attainable Deadlines
The old mantra, “I work better on a deadline” is likely true. That’s why it’s suggested to set deadlines for yourself that are outside of the deadlines imposed by your organization. A manageable amount of stress is typically helpful to keep ahead of your workload.
Limit Your Exposure to Meetings
If there is a time waster out there, it is the meeting. A normal meeting will resolve the issue in the first ten minutes, or not at all. In fact, according to one study, the average office worker spends around 31 hours a month in meetings. That’s far too long.
Stop Multitasking
The more the concept is studied, the more that psychologists believe that multitasking is detrimental to overall productivity when compared with having dedicated focus on one task at a time.
Perfection Isn’t Attainable
One big roadblock to productivity is the idea that a task can be carried out perfectly. Sure, you can be comprehensive, but when your business is falling behind because you can’t leave well enough alone, you only have yourself to blame.
Be Proactive
If you really want to be productive, go into any day knowing what needs to get done. Business is filled with natural distractions; you will want to plan time for all of them. By being proactive, you can eliminate a lot of the not-so-natural distractions.
Turn Off Notifications
How is anyone supposed to work when they have new notifications popping up at them every few minutes? Business is filled with situations where limiting your exposure to notifications can keep you from being distracted. Turn them off and see how much better you can complete tasks without all the hubbub coming in from the Internet.
Attempt to Reduce Interruptions
Most of the time staying productive comes down to focus. There are a million and six different types of possible interruptions, but if you can mitigate them, you can be your most productive self.
Do you have any other suggestions on how to improve your productivity? Share them with us and our readers in the comments below and subscribe to our newsletter for more great articles about making your business the best it can be.
