How to be Productive and Counteract Low Productivity
There you
are, sitting at your desk and feeling tired: it has been a long week and you’d
like to stop working and relax a bit, but at the same time, you know you can’t
do this since you have still work to do. In a way you are stuck: no matter how
hard you work, you don’t seem to make any noticeable progress, which makes you
even more frustrated and tired and you finally feel like giving up the project
you have been working on.
You may be
thinking that there has to be a better way to do things, rather than banging
your head against the wall, and you are absolutely right!
Are you
taking the right action at the right time?
There can
be many reason behind your frustrations:
First and
foremost, are you sure you are focusing on the right action steps? If this is
not the case, then it’s time to stop for a moment, see the bigger picture and
redefine the tasks you should be doing right now. Could it be that perhaps you
didn’t prepare in advance for the tasks you are doing? This could happen when
you are dependent on other people’s input before you can continue your project
for instance—if you didn’t see this situation coming, you could be wasting your
time because you don’t have any backup plan for these situations.
It could
also be that you just have too much work to do. Ask yourself whether you are
optimizing and automating everything
already, or are there processes or tasks that could be eliminated by those two
methods. If the answer to the latter part of the question is “yes,” it’s time
to take action on improving the processes. The sooner you do this, the sooner
your workload will decrease and the less chance there is for unproductivity.
Finding
the source of low productivity
It’s time
to take a closer look at your situation, so that we can see the sources behind
unproductive action.
To do
this, it’s time to do some checks.
The first
check is related to your mindset: do you feel that the time is lost if you
spend time on planning your tasks? If this is so, then it’s no wonder that you
are wasting time on something unproductive.
Next,
check your environment:
does it allow you to work in a focused manner? If you are getting easily
distracted because of the environment, it’s time to start finding alternative
locations for doing the work.
Finally,
make sure that your project isn’t too big to handle. If you are trying to
tackle it all by yourself, it’s no wonder if you are feeling frustrated and
tired. Additionally, if you find the tasks are too big in size, then this could
be another reason for the stress you are experiencing right now.
Destroy
the unproductive action with a right mindset
To fix the
situation, I suggest developing a mindset that you can start using from this
project and onward. This mindset consists of the following six
cornerstones:
- Stop rushing into things by planning
them first
- Know what you are doing and understand
the importance of doing so
- Pick the right location
- Break the project into smaller pieces
- Don’t try to handle it all by yourself
- Review your progress and take
corrective action if needed
If you
implement this productive mindset, then there is a much bigger chance of
completing tasks in time and finishing your projects sooner than later.
Get your
true productivity back with these 6 steps
1. Stop
rushing.
I know that you’d like to take action as soon
as possible, but don’t make this mistake! Instead, spend a little time by
creating a plan to follow. Know your next action steps, as well as your
outcomes and keep them clearly in your head. If you understand what they are,
then you are already on a better track of keeping things in control and
reducing your workload at the same time.
2. Know
what you are doing.
Ask yourself what you are supposed to be
doing next and why you should be doing it—when you can answer to these two
questions, then you are on the right path. Keep asking these questions all the
time. They are a great way to make you aware of what you are doing. They also
prevent you from taking the wrong action, if you can’t see the value of the
task.
3. Pick
the right location for your work. It’s
of the utmost important to pick the right location for your work. If you can’t
work at home, then take your laptop with you and go somewhere else. Go outside
(if the weather permits), to a public library or to a coffee shop. You can also
rent a co-working space, or if money is not an issue, even a separate office to
get your work done.
4. Break
the project into smaller pieces.
Take
your project and break it into smaller pieces. Focus on one piece at a time and
then move on to the next one. For instance, if you are developing a piece of
software, one task would be getting the user interface to be more compelling.
Then, you could decide on different subsections that specifically create that
great user experience, like setting the right fonts or defining the right color
theme. When you have finished one area, you can move to the next one (like improving
the performance of your application) and so on.
5. Gather
a team.
It’s easy to think that only you can do the
tasks and that you are irreplaceable: you aren’t! There is always someone who
can do the task faster and better than you.
For
instance, when I’m building my blog, I have a virtual team doing various things
for me: a designer and a developer for creating new functionality for my blog;
a coach for telling me what things to focus on; maintenance guys for keeping my
blog updated; and a proofreader for checking my written content before it’s
published. Doing these things myself would be just madness and I would have
quit blogging a long time ago, if I was still trying to do everything by
myself.
6. Review
your progress and analyze.
This is perhaps the most common thing that
people forget to do: Reviewing progress.
You need
to do this so that you can avoid mistakes or prevent taking action on things,
which are not getting any results. I suggest doing the review at least on a
weekly basis, where you reflect what you have done, how it went and what you
are doing next. Even if this might feel like just a waste of time, you are
wasting much more time when you end up taking unproductive actions later on.
In
conclusion
As you now
know, there are many reasons for taking unproductive actions. When you focus on
things like planning, the right environment and breaking the project into
smaller pieces, you can cut down your workload a lot and the chances for
unproductive action decreases. A little bit of pro-activity can save you from
unnecessary work later on.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-productive-and-counteract-low-productivity.html?ref=mail&mtype=daily_newsletter&mid=20170222_customized_editor_pick&uid=687414&hash=707e797f7e757e6d794c856d747b7b3a6f7b79&action=click
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