Earl V. MeisterImagine closing each workday with a satisfied sigh, knowing that you were so productive that you accomplished everything on your list. And also knowing that you were at the top of your creative game-completing your tasks both efficiently and well. Do you see yourself whistling as you walk away from work?
You can be the star of this movie about productivity, rather than the alternate version where you end the day tired and slumped behind a desk stacked with unfinished projects. If you don’t like your usual workday, you can change it.
Most of us aren’t as productive as we’d like to be for two reasons: We have bad habits that affect our productivity at work, and we react rather than proactively, putting out fires rather than making progress toward our goals.
The solution is simple, though not always easy. We can replace our bad habits and reactive patterns with good habits that make us proactive and take over our own workdays. Follow these tips on how to increase productivity and become your best and most productive self at work.
Do your heavy lifting when you are at your best
There’s endless advice for people who don’t do mental tasks like answering emails or routine chores in the morning, but instead do all the tasks that are most creatively challenging-which is great if you’re a morning person. If you’re more of a night owl, like me, this obviously won’t work well for you.
Productivity expert Tony Wong advises, “Use your morning to focus on yourself…. Start your day off right by ignoring your morning emails and having a good breakfast, reading the news, meditating or exercising. This will ensure you have the fuel you need for a productive day. “The point is, do your most challenging tasks in your personal peak productivity time, whenever that is.
Stop multitasking
It’s a productivity killer. Research shows that productivity can be reduced by up to 40% due to the mental blocks that occur when switching tasks. Even more surprising, IQ dropped by 15 points for some multitaskers in a University of London study.
Need more proof? A study from the University of Sussex in the UK shows that multitasking can actually physically damage your brain. The study found that participants who were addicted to using multiple devices at once had lower gray matter density in a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is related to emotional control and decision-making, empathy and the brain’s response to rewards.
So stop trying to do it all at once. Instead, dramatically increase productivity by giving full attention to one task at a time. When your eyes and hands start drifting to something else, think about how important it is to keep all your little gray cells engaged.
Prepare a to-do list every night.
To-do lists are invaluable productivity tools. They organize you, provide focus, and reward you with feelings of satisfaction when you’re able to review things you’ve accomplished.
If you create (or update) a to-do list every night, you won’t waste time searching for your task at the beginning of the workday. You might even try talking someone through your list. Leo Wildrich, co-founder of Buffer, explains the power of this technique in ” What Multitasking Does to Our Brains.”
The to-do list I jotted down didn’t change, but it felt like I had already done half the work in my head. The next day, all I had to do was look at the task and get it done.
Shorten your to-do list
How many items are on your typical to-do list? Eight? Twenty-eight? However many, you’ll feel good about finishing each of them and crossing them off. But you’ll never join the ranks of productivity superstars unless you cross some of them off before you even care-because higher productivity demands focus.
In” The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs “Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs, tells how Jobs’ insistence that Apple produced only four computers saved the company. He also tells how Jobs used to-do lists to create focus:
After he left the company, Jobs took his “Top 100” people on a retreat every year. On the last day, he’d stand in front of a whiteboard and asked, “What are the 10 things we should do next? “People would struggle to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down-and then cross off the ones he decreed. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, ‘We can only do three.’
Getting focused means narrowing down your options. So every night when you review your to-do list, ask yourself two questions;
What are the important tasks on this list?
How many of those important tasks can I realistically accomplish or make significant progress on tomorrow?
Delegate properly
What to use as a nail gun is to drive nails. Once you start doing this, you will be amazed at how much faster and easier your work is. If you do it right, that is. For many managers and business people, delegating is like a polar bear swim; they dive in excitedly, but jump out just as quickly.
Why? The most common complaint is that delegating work gives the manager or leader even more to do; now they have to oversee someone else’s work instead of doing their own. But if you assign someone a task and then closely monitor them while they do it, you are micromanaging, not delegating.
When you delegate properly, you have more time to do your own work. The key is to assign the right task to the right person-a person you know has the skills to do the work and who you can trust to get it done-and then leave it to them. It takes some getting used to, but you’ll be surprised how productive you can be when you really let go.
Eliminate distractions
Nilofer Merchant, HBR author and founder of Rubicon Consulting, shares valuable advice her boss gave her early in her career:
Feed the eagles. There are only a few things that matter. Know what you are. And put your energy into them. They’re not always right in front of you, so you have to look up and down more. Starve the turkeys-many things are right in front of you …. Pecking, making noise and demanding attention. Because they’re right in front of you, it’s easy to pay attention to them the most and first. Ignore them. They will actually do just fine without you.”
We’ve already dealt with the importance of focus. But the flip side is that you also need to identify and ignore those turkeys. And for many of us, those turkeys demanding attention are social media and email.
To be productive, you need to shut down their noise and ditch them. Turn off your email and phone notifications when you need full concentration. Are you a Facebook – or Twitter – addict? Use social media as a carrot. Allow yourself X number of minutes of browsing after you complete an important task. Then turn it off and get back to work.
Schedule phone calls
Wouldn’t it be nice to have your own personal secretary so you can say ” ” Hold my calls!” while you’re working on something? Well guess what? You can manage your own calls and the payoff will be huge productivity gains.
If you are not expecting a critical call, first turn off your phone when you want to work on a project that requires your full attention. Then set aside a structured time to make all outbound calls so you spend less time trying to reach people and more time in productive conversations.
When you’re working on something that doesn’t need your full attention, you can turn on your phone and take calls.It saves you from having to return a number of calls at some point during your day. But know when the phone is going to be a distraction and get it out of the way.
Break up work periods with exercise
Studies have shown that physical activity improves brain function. And while you can (rightfully) assume that this improved brain power will allow you to focus more, be more creative, and learn faster, you may not realize that exercise also increases your brain’s affective capabilities, which means you’ll find it easier to get along with others.
If you want the most bang for the buck, exercise during work hours. A study by Leeds Metropolitan University found that 65% of workers who used their company gym at lunchtime were more productive and had better face-to-face interactions with their colleagues than those who didn’t use the gym at lunch.
In summary, it’s time to take these words from Ron Freidman to heart and get into a regular exercise routine:
Instead of thinking of exercise as something we do for ourselves-a personal indulgence that takes us away from our work-it’s time to consider physical activity as part of the work itself. The alternative, where information is processed more slowly, forgotten more often, and frustrated easily, makes us less effective at our jobs and harder for our colleagues to get by.
Be optimistic
Happy people are more productive.
In a study conducted by Maastricht University of optimism and performance in the call center, the results showed that the optimists in the tested group made more sales achieved and more bonuses. More specifically, it was only dispositional optimists who showed greater success. The authors of the study define dispositional optimism as generally expecting good results over bad in life.
If you’re not a naturally optimistic person, this is the disposition you want to cultivate-and the good news is that you can. In his study, happiness researcher and author Shawn Achor asked tax managers at KMPG to perform one of five activities per day for three weeks. He found that the experimental group with the highest scores for optimism and life satisfaction-both immediately after completing the experiment and four months later-was tasked with positively engaging with people in their social support network.
The most direct path to happiness, Achor found in his research, was social support for others:
Providers of social support-persons who were loose for others, invited co-workers to lunch, and organized office activities-were not only ten times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept to themselves; they were 40% more likely to receive a promotion.
Getting enough sleep
Seventy percent of Americans admitted to sleeping on the job, in a survey by William A. Anthony, PhD, a clinical psychologist and director of Boston University’s Center for Psychological Rehabilitation. Why? Because you have to, Anthony says. Early morning commutes, long work hours and too many tasks at home mean more and more people aren’t getting the shuteye they need.
We all know that sleep deprivation has a negative impact on our performance. Lack of sleep reduces our concentration, working memory, mathematical capacity, and reasoning. And because the prefrontal cortex is particularly vulnerable to sleep deprivation, tasks that require logical reasoning or complex thinking are the most impaired. Surprisingly, it only takes one night of sleep deprivation to create major deficits in our abilities.
So, how much sleep do you need? According to the National Sleep Foundation, seven to nine hours a night if you’re 26 to 64 years old. If you don’t get that much, taking a nap during the day can be beneficial to your productivity.
Finally…
But certainly not least, take care of yourself.
Getting enough sleep and making exercise a part of your routine are just two of the things you need to do each day to be at your best and most productive.
You probably know the rest:
Eat a healthy diet.
Drink plenty of water.
Get rid of your bad habits, whether they’re smoking or hanging around toxic people.
And be kind to yourself and to other people. Take time for yourself and do whatever (healthy) thing invites and refreshes you.
The healthier you are, the more productive you will be. And the more productive you are with your work, the more time you have to spend as you like.
Earl V. Meister
