How to stop wasting your time in the productivity furnace

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

You don't have to work harder to get more done. Sometimes you need something completely different.

What should you do if you don't have time to hand over the assignment on time? Stay at the workplace for another couple of hours!

What does it take to become the most effective employee? Come earlier than everyone else, leave later than everyone else, work on weekends!

Why are you still not rich and successful? You just have to work harder! More, more, more!

The road to success is a curved railway track along which we are driven by a steam locomotive of personal productivity. If you want to get to the goal faster, then do not stop burning your personal time in its furnace - the more, the better. However, the efficiency of a steam engine, as you know, is not very high, and science has long come up with much faster means of transportation. Do you want to know how to quickly get to success and not burn all your time at the same time?

1. Stop working overtime

Do you know when the eight-hour working day and the five-day working week finally triumphed? When, at the beginning of the last century, Henry Ford, as a result of experiments in his factories, clearly proved that it is with such a schedule that maximum labor productivity is achieved.

The more you work, the less efficient and productive you will be in both the short and long term.

On task, the group using the 60-hour workweek showed such a decrease in productivity that it lagged behind the group on the usual 40-hour schedule in the two-month experiment. Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts - Fact or Fiction

This is explained by a whole set of effects that overwork has on our body. These are bad mood, inert thinking, decreased reaction, memory impairment, and so on. In the fight against these negative phenomena, the correct sleep pattern is of particular importance. If the next time you wonder why you are failing again today and everything is falling out of hand, it is only because you are one of those 70% of people who chronically do not get enough sleep.

Thus, the traditional daily routine, divided into eight-hour work and rest cycles, was invented for a reason … It has a foundation, proven by practice and science, so there is no excuse for a long hang-up at the workplace.

2. Don't say yes too often

According to the Pareto principle, 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results, while 20% of the results consume 80% of the effort. Instead of working harder and harder, we must first focus on the effort that gives us 80% of the results, and give up the rest. We will have more time to focus on the most important tasks. We must stop accepting tasks that bring us nothing but headaches and wasted time.

The difference between successful and highly successful people is that the latter almost always say no. Warren buffet

That is, the main question that is in front of you should not be "Where can I get so much time to do everything?" "What else can I cross out to fully work on the main thing?".

3. Stop doing everything yourself. Trust people

It is ridiculous to think that the best commander is the one who waves the saber best, fires a cannon and marches on the parade ground. The owner of a restaurant chain is far from always able to cook the best dishes, and the owner of a publishing house is able to write genius prose or even just a page of text without errors.

The main advantage of all these and thousands of other successful people is that they do not strive to do everything on their own and better than everyone else. Instead, they skillfully find and use people who are true professionals in their field.

We cannot do everything ourselves, and if we try, we will quickly hit the ceiling of our capabilities. It is much better to learn how to delegate your tasks to other people so that you can focus on the most important tasks. Instead of wasting your time, try to find experts who can do the job better and faster than you.

4. Turn off perfectionism

The desire to do everything in the best possible way may even please at first. "What a responsible employee, how attentive he is to the little things, how uncompromising about shortcomings!" - your colleagues and management are happy.

Exactly until the first deadline for the task is failed, then the second and third. A pronounced perfectionism can become those fetters that will not allow you to take a single step. Constant alterations and improvements will not allow you to put the final point and lead to a huge waste of your own and others' time.

Getting rid of this condition is difficult, but possible. Just set an exact end time for the project and try to keep it. Make peace with the fact that perfection does not exist, and the time spent looking for it will never return to you.

5. Automate repetitive tasks

In a recent study called Using Automation Software To Increase Business Productivity & Competitiveness, scientists found that the more repetitive tasks you run into your business, the more time you can gain from automating them. So, for a group of participants, whose work consisted of 70% repetitive processes, in two months it was possible to reduce the time spent on routine to only 10% due to the automation of these processes.

Very often people prefer to do everything by hand, because it seems to them the simplest and most effortless task. However, over time, these simple, small tasks add up to hours, days and weeks of your time, which simply disappears into no one knows where.

Therefore, every day, before doing the next familiar thing, such as checking and sorting mail, processing photos, writing reports, and so on, stop for a second and ask yourself: is there any way to do it differently? For example, you can set up filters for sorting mail, Dropbox or Google+ for uploading photos, IFTTT for automating web applications.

Take your time once to automate processes, and in the future you can use it to solve really important and creative tasks

6. Time for idleness

In the locomotive philosophy with which this article began, idleness is considered a terrible sin, which threatens not only to stop the train, but also to derail it. In fact, this is not the case. When we are constantly focused on our business, constantly striving to do more and be in time for everything, then there is no time to think about choosing a path and stop for refueling. And this approach is much more dangerous.

Every person needs the opportunity to take a break. Distraction from workdays, idleness and fooling around only seem to be a senseless wasting of time. In fact, this is a good way not only to relax, but also to look at your life from the outside, to rethink the tasks and ways to achieve them. Sometimes the most important decisions do not come when you are actively looking for them, but when you seem to have forgotten about everything and are engaged in completely different things.

So don't forget to make occasional stops, get off your productivity train, and take a walk around the area. Perhaps this is where you will find the shortest path to achieving your goal.