10 bad habits that are killing your productivity

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Poor planning, social media, and questionable competition waste time and reduce your productivity.

1. You don't make a work plan

You have a list of tasks and you are going to complete them all, but you have no idea when exactly. As a result, it is quite difficult to understand the entire scope of work and correctly distribute tasks by day, week, month. This leads to the fact that you either do not meet the deadlines, or start too dashingly and lose strength by the middle of the distance.

What to do

Use a paper planner or special apps to plan your work. Enter repetitive routine tasks for months in advance and do not forget to record those arriving.

Watch for density. Let the work be evenly distributed over the periods. This will help you avoid burnout and work at a comfortable pace. And it will also allow you to clearly demonstrate that you are busy all the time if someone decides to hang up an additional case on you.

2. Your schedule is too tight

You have everything planned out and you are happy - but only on the first day. Then it turns out that it was not always possible to correctly estimate how long it will take to complete the task. In addition to this, other assignments arrive from colleagues and management. As a result, a lot of time has to be spent rebuilding the plan in the face of burning deadlines.

What to do

Approach the question wisely. Set aside more time on the task than you need to do it for sure. Leave empty time slots for sudden extra cases. This will reduce your stress levels and, as a result, you will be able to do more.

3. You do not automate processes

Much of the work of modern man is a matter of technology. If you keep doing something with your hands with full involvement instead of outsourcing it to machines, then you are wasting time.

What to do

It seems that it is easier to do everything manually than to deal with new programs, algorithms, and so on. This is true for one-off tasks. But with repetitive things, it's different. Better to spend the day and free up many hours in the future.

For example, if your work is not related to numbers, then you can easily perform calculations manually. If we are talking about regular tracking of statistics, it would be more correct to write the formulas in the "Google Spreadsheet". Then you will only need to enter new data and get the result.

Another example: dozens of letters fall in your mail, and not all of them are urgent. These include extremely important messages from regular customers, slightly less important messages from colleagues and newsletters that you need to look through once a week. If you set up sorting depending on the sender, you will receive three folders with different priorities and no longer have to go through the entire list of correspondence to find the desired letter.

4. You are distracted by time killers

Checking social networks and reading chats in instant messengers is the case when I decided to take a break for 5 minutes, but in the end I was distracted for an hour. They take time without bringing anything in return. And you end up being late everywhere.

What to do

If your work is not related to social networks and messengers, then nothing important to you happens there. So give yourself a limited amount of time that you give them.

Turn off all notifications, except for notifications in work chats. Even if you are a rock and do not open the social network immediately after the phone beeps, you still give part of your attention to thinking about who wrote what.

It will soon become noticeable that there is more time, and the level of stress has decreased, because now you do not boil a hundred times a day because someone is wrong on the Internet.

5. You don't know how to refuse

You have a reputation as a responsive person, so people constantly come to you with requests for help, advice, teach, and drink tea together. But your consent is beneficial to the visitors and to the disadvantage of you, as it steals such valuable time and increases the amount of work.

What to do

A little more selfishness: assess the situation through the prism of your busyness. If you have some free time, why not help. If everything is on fire, then give priority to your own affairs.

6. You practice multitasking

What looks good on a resume is not always effective in practice. Switching between activities is also time-consuming work. As a result, you solve problems much longer than if you tackle them sequentially.

What to do

Leave your superpower in case of emergency. In the absence of rush jobs, solve problems one after another. If it makes sense, group them into groups that are close in meaning.

7. You are not content with simple solutions

Even routine tasks you try to twist so as to find several options for execution. Pay a lot of attention to little things, strive for perfection. But the game is not worth the effort, and the result is only wasted time.

What to do

In order not to exaggerate the importance of the matter, ask yourself what significance your decision will have tomorrow, in a month, in a year. The simplest approach will give a sufficient result. This will help you stop deceiving yourself.

There is a nuance here. Perhaps, by wasting time, you are trying to postpone an unpleasant task for later. If so, just get started.

8. You do not delegate part of the work

The expression “If you want to do something well, do it yourself” breathes with pride. The idea that no one can replace you tickles your sense of self-importance, but is very far from reality. It is true that you do something better than others, but colleagues will cope with many of your tasks just as well. And you will free yourself some of the time.

What to do

If you feel that you cannot handle the volume of work, ask for help.

9. You don't learn from mistakes

Making mistakes is unpleasant, but useful. This indicates to us problems and helps us to avoid them in the future. If you step on the same rake over and over again, you need to change something.

What to do

It is important sometimes to slow down and think about the results of your actions. Something went well, so the solution methods are worth taking note of. If you run into trouble, it’s better to find the source and think over several options to fix the problem. So you can easily get out of the situation next time.

10. You compare yourself to others

You try your best, but coworkers get things done faster. And you take the time to worry that you are lagging behind them.

What to do

This is a counterproductive approach. Everyone works at their own pace, so comparison with colleagues will not work. Moreover, higher speed does not mean greater efficiency.

It is much better to compare your own results with your own. Set goals for yourself that you want to achieve and think about how you can become better.

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