Businesses are always looking for a way to boost productivity. Some businesses will try almost anything to do so. For the individual, however, managing your productivity is a little less complicated. That’s not to say that it is always simple. Typically, the best way to improve productivity is to improve time management. How does one go about changing their behaviors to improve their productivity? Let’s take a look at a couple of ways. In this blog we will dive into strategies that help prioritize productivity, whether that be personal or business related.
Monitor Your Time
An individual will always think he/he will know how long a task can take when they’ve done the task numerous times. It’s surprising to them to find out that their estimations are pretty far off. In order to definitively know how long tasks take, monitoring how much time they take is a great solution. Once you know how much time you take, you can make a conscious effort to take less time.
Take Breaks
Breaks are actually great for productivity. Getting away from a task, especially one that is time intensive, can help rebuild any lost focus. Even taking little micro breaks of a few minutes between larger tasks can help reset your mind.
Work with Reasonable Deadlines
A lot of people work better with a little bit of stress from an impending deadline. Sometimes, however, the deadline is counterproductive. If you are able to set your own deadlines, make sure you leave yourself with a reasonable amount of time to get everything done. This will help stay ahead of the workload.This will help stay ahead of the workload and actually finish sooner than you might have had you been under stress.
Limit Your Exposure to Meetings
What percentage of your meetings, would you say, are a giant waste of time? If that percentage is high, consider that one study found that the average employee spends 31 hours a month in meetings. If you are wasting over 30 hours a month in meetings, cutting that down will most certainly improve your overall productivity. With many more working remotely, people have been meeting online and becoming more efficient in meetings.
Stop Multitasking
The idea that multitasking improves productivity is not new, but according to psychologists, it is wrong. Across the board they have found that it is detrimental to getting things done efficiently. If you want to improve productivity, focus on one task at a time. Studies have shown that most people can’t actually work on more than one thing at once in a productive way.
Perfection Isn’t Attainable
We all want to be good at our jobs, but if you’re spending endless hours attempting to make something perfect, you will find that, from a different perspective, anything has flaws. Do your best, but don’t try to be perfect, it is actually impossible.
Be Proactive
The most productive people don’t deal with as many problems as people who aren’t. This is because they proactively handle situations that create inefficiency. By planning for the worst, you will likely find that the worst never comes.
Attempt to Reduce Interruptions
Interruptions are going to happen, but if they are continuous, distraction is inevitable. Try to maintain focus on one problem at a time, even if the interruption is welcome. Keep your phone elsewhere if you tend to pick it up a lot when working.
Turn Off Notifications
Notifications can be extremely distracting and can keep people from maintaining focus. By turning off notifications, people aren’t inundated with status updates and erroneous messages and are able to put their all into the tasks at hand.
We hope these strategies that help prioritize productivity help you. If productivity is the name of the game, considering these strategies will help. Subscribe to our blog for more great business tips and technology information and check out our Managed IT Services page for any help IT related.
