PRODUCTIVITY SPECIAL ....Upgrade your productivity

Upgrade your productivity

Here are some practices you should steer away from this year

Being more productive is about working smarter, not harder, and making the most of each day. While this is no easy feat, getting more done in less time is a much more attainable goal if you are not sabotaging yourself with bad habits. Here are the things you should stop doing right now to become more productive:

Hitting the snooze button

It might feel as though pressing the snooze button in the morning gives you a little bit of extra rest to start your day, but the truth is that it does more harm than good. That’s because when you wake up, your endocrine system begins to release alertness hormones to get you ready for the day. By going back to sleep, you are slowing down this process. Plus, nine minutes doesn’t give your body time to get the restorative, it needs deep sleep.

Procrastinating

People often start off their day by completing easy tasks to get themselves rolling, and leave their more difficult work for later. This is a bad idea, and one that frequently leads to the important work not getting done at all. As researchers have found, people have a limited amount of willpower that decreases throughout the day. So, it’s best to get your hardest, most important tasks done at the start.

More often than laziness, the root of procrastination is the fear of not doing a good job. The only way to overcome procrastination is to abandon perfectionism and not fuss over details as you move forward. Being punctual and setting a deadline for yourself can also help.

Hooked to emails

Constant internet access can also lead people to check emails throughout the day. Each time you do this, you lose up to 25 minutes of work time. Instead, strategy consultant Ron Friedman suggests closing email tabs and turning off your phone for 30-minute chunks of deep-diving work.

Not prioritising

Some people think having lots of goals is the best way to ensure success — if one idea fails, at least there are plenty more in reserve to turn to. Unfortunately, this sort of wavering can be extremely unproductive.

Warren Buffett has the perfect antidote. He saw that his personal pilot was not accomplishing his life goals, so Buffett asked him to make a list of 25 things he wanted to get done before he died. But rather than advising him to take little steps toward completing every one of them, Buffett told the pilot to pick five things he thought were most important and ignore the rest.

Too many meetings

Nothing disrupts the flow of productivity like an unnecessary meeting. And with tools like email, instant messenger, and video chat at your fingertips, it’s best to use meetings for introductions and serious discussions that should only be held in person. Don’t accept a meeting unless the person who requested it has put forth a clear agenda and stated exactly how much time they will need.

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ETP 5JAN18