Increase Your Productivity
Productivity is the combination of intelligent planning and focused efforts. Staying productive at work or at home can be a challenge. Every time the work day ends, odds are that you are not satisfied with what you have accomplished. Productivity can be continuously improved, but here are some pointers that have really worked for me.
1. Seek help / Delegate tasks accordingly
Everybody needs help and should never take on large tasks alone. Two of the biggest barriers for getting help is trust and introversion.
In order to get help from others, you need to trust your colleagues in helping you complete work. If you tell your colleague what the deadline is for the project, then they will likely take it very seriously. Make sure to give your colleague all of the resources that he or she needs such as relevant documents or spreadsheets in order to reach the best deliverable.
People are not going to volunteer in helping out so you have to feel comfortable about asking for help. If you are too introverted to ask for help, then you will most likely be doing tasks on your own. You may also end up becoming somebody else’s work-horse because you are too shy to speak up.
2. Do not get sucked into unnecessary meetings
Time is the most important currency in your life. While it may be tempting to meet with as many people for the benefit of networking, the time you get at your desk is extremely valuable. Knowing what meetings to refuse is very important.
If your manager wants to have a one-on-one meeting, then it is obviously very important. However, attending a meeting about whether to use a Times New Roman or Georgia font at the weekly newsletter design subcommittee get-together may not be worth your time.
In my line of work, I get requests for meetings all the time. This is why I have started to designate two days out of the week for meetings and the rest of the time to focus on my core tasks.
According to Schaffer Consulting managing partner Ron Ashkenas, the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline realized that so much of their time was being wasted on unnecessary meetings. People were spending just as much time in meetings as they were on actual drug development. This is why the company adapted a “fit for purpose” meeting process where only the people that are directly involved in a phase of the project would attend the meetings. Parties that are interested in what happened during the meeting would receive notes with the most important details.
3. Create to-do lists
In your life, there are tasks that are simple and ones that are complex. My preference is to go after the easy ones first and then tackle the complicated ones after. To stay on top of tasks, I create to-do lists and track them using Google Tasks. Since Google Tasks sync with Gmail, Google Calendar, and the Google mobile app, it makes it easier to refer to them while on-the-go.
If some of the tasks are larger, then break them into multiple smaller tasks. For example, if you need to put together a white paper, you should make it a point to complete 2-3 pages per day rather than trying to put together one large document on the day before it is due.
Putting a timer on these tasks is worth considering so that you do not lose focus on other items on your to-do list. Sometimes I focus too much on one task while another one gets neglected. Before I know it, the deadline for the other task arrives and I am not ready for it.
One of the most satisfying aspects of creating a to-do list is crossing off things when they are done. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and gives you a visualization of progress. When going through an annual review, the tasks that you have crossed off can be a great talking point for what you have accomplished.
4. Take breaks
Recently scientists at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana reviewed the lifestyle of 17,000 men and women over the duration of 13 years. The scientists found that 54% of those people are likely to die of heart attacks! The reason was because those people were sitting for most of the day. The enzyme, lipoprotein lipase (LPL), breaks down fat in the bloodstream and turns it into energy. When people are sitting, it is likely that LPL levels drop according to Marc Hamilton, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri. This causes fat cells to build up.
If you spend more than 8-10 hours at a desk and without moving around much, then you will notice that you have less energy. Productivity is not measured by the number of hours you sit at a desk. It is measured by how much you get done without sacrificing your health.
One of the major reasons for obesity in the last 20 years is because of decreased levels of daily physical activities. Take a break and go for a daily walk.
5. Weed out distractions
I know a few people that have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Hootsuite, Tumblr, Foursquare, Shutterfly, Pinterest, Google Chat, Reddit, and StumbleUpon account. When they are not using these social media tools, they may be checking their e-mail on their smartphones or reading random facts on Wikipedia every 5 minutes. Disconnect!
In the U.S., over 12.2 billion collective hours are being spent browsing on a social network every day. This is costing the U.S. economy around $650 billion per year based on each social media user costing a company roughly $4,452 per year, according to data compiled by LearnStuff.com.
In the same study, it was revealed that distractions are not just affecting adults working at companies. The average college student is spending around 3 hours per day on social networks while spending only 2 hours per day studying.
If you find that you are really falling behind on your work, then you should consider uninstalling the Facebook and Twitter app from your smartphone. Some of my friends that have a major exam coming up deactivated their account on Facebook as a reminder that social networking is not their biggest priority right now.
6. Stop watching so much TV
The quality of TV shows is increasing, but it is important to remember that empires don’t get built on couches. I have spent many hours wanting to find out what crazy Walter White is up to on Breaking Bad or the shenanigans that the boys on Entourage are getting themselves into. I’m not alone because Americans spend around 34 hours per week watching TV, according to Nielsen.
Don’t get me wrong, it is important to veg and wind down, but you may want to learn to cap yourself. Maybe you only need to watch one TV show per day instead of watching 5 episodes of the The Amazing Race back-to-back. Just imagine how much productivity can be gained by substituting the hours you spend watching TV on homework instead.
Sitting on the couch in front of the TV has detrimental effects on your health too. When you are using a computer, your hands are constantly busy, but you tend to snack more when sitting in front of the TV since your hands are free. You also have a tendency to lie or sit down constantly in front of the TV. This lack of activity is bad for your health also.
7. Set ambitious, yet realistic goals
Les Brown, a motivational speaker and radio DJ, once said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” If you can cross everything off of your to-do list in one day, you need to create more ambitious goals. Some goals should take as long as 1 week, 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. People that set higher goals have a tendency to be more satisfied than those with lower expectations, according to research published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
One of the major reasons why people fail a goals is because they did not set a deadline. Goals have to be very specific and they should be written down. It is good to get feedback about the goals in order to refine them.
Goals should be personal and professional. Spending time balancing your budget can be a personal goal and putting together process flow charts to make certain recurring tasks easier at work is a professional goal.
8. Designate times to handle e-mail
Everyday there is a good amount of time spent writing e-mail replies in a timely manner. If you are constantly checking your e-mail, this could mean you have too much free time on your hands and need to work on other tasks. Urgent information tends to be passed through phone calls rather than e-mail. If you are spending an average of over 2 hours per day replying to e-mails, then you may want to reassess how you budget your time.
Instead of stopping what you are doing to respond to a new e-mail, you should consider setting aside a time for responding to e-mails in batches. Generally I prefer to respond to e-mails that I receive right when I get to work. I also like to put aside 15 minutes right before leaving work to respond to e-mails. Most people that send me e-mails receive replies within 24 hours.
You can generally detect the urgency in the e-mails by the subject line. This is why setting up push notifications for e-mail on your phone can be very beneficial. Being able to quickly glance at the subject lines of e-mails you are receiving throughout the day saves you from having to constantly open up your inbox.
If it is urgent for you to get a response, then you should write ”time sensitive” in the subject line.
9. Reward yourself for motivation
When achieving a goal, it is important to reward yourself somehow for motivation. This could be in the form of a material possession or certain type of food. If you exercised for about 20 hours over the course of a week, then you can reward yourself with your favorite food like sushi. Perhaps, you should buy a new gadget when getting a promotion like a DSLR camera. One way I like to reward myself is by sleeping earlier or watching the latest episode of my favorite TV show when I get a major project completed.
10. Constantly ask yourself if you what are doing presently is productive
I catch myself spending a lot of time using Facebook or participating in irrelevant conversations while at work. When I realize that I am not working on something productive, I mentally scold myself and get back to the grind. On the contrary, I reward myself when completing something crucial by doing things like stepping away from my desk to read a book or grab a coffee with a friend.
11. Spend a few minutes preparing for the next day
This tip is one of my personal favorites. On Sundays, I typically decide my wardrobe for the week. I also prepare part of my lunch for the next day and week. I even set up the coffee maker so that I just have to press the “On” button in the morning to have fresh coffee brewed first thing in the morning. Mornings can be chaotic and the less you have to do before heading out the door, the more smooth your day will be.
12. Sleep early and get up early
Sleeping late and waking up early can be detrimental to your productivity the next day. If you are half-awake at work, then the odds are that your quality of work will suffer. I’m usually at my A-game if I get 8 hours of sleep and start working at 7AM. As Benjamin Franklin once said ”Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”