by Amy Johnson
Do you ever find there aren’t enough hours is the day? While many people try hard to be as productive as possible, they often find themselves getting distracted. However, making every day fruitful is much easier if you can first ditch productivity-sucking activities.
Check out these eight common mistakes people make when it comes to productivity.
1. Treating cheating as a reward
People often decide to treat themselves if they are doing something they find difficult, such as dieting, saving money, exercising or working. However, if someone treats themselves to a dress after a week of saving, this undermines the achievement they have made. It can even encourage you to ditch your plan entirely, as you’ve already been ‘bad’.
Try to view the act of you achieving your goals as the treat. You wanted to improve yourself – and now you are well on your way!
2. Planning unnecessary meetings
Unnecessary meetings can suck all of the productivity out of someone’s working day. Often meetings are overly long and pointless, pulling people away from the tasks they were working on. A good solution to this is instead of arranging a meeting, see if you can speak with the person in another way. Skype, texting, emailing and phone calls are all efficient ways to communicate on important matters, while still focusing on your own projects.
3. Multitasking
While many people believe that they can do two tasks at once with ease, research has discovered that most people become less efficient while attempting to multitask. Doing multiple tasks tends to decrease their attention span and productivity, so try concentrating on one task at a time for great, productive results.
4. Browsing the web
As most people have access to the web at both work and home, it can be easy to get side-tracked and find yourself online. Many people plan on briefly checking social media or checking the answer to a question, but end up staying online for much longer than intended.
A good solution to this productivity mistake is to write down what you wanted to look at online, put it to the side, and then finish off the task you were doing before checking.
5. Putting off hard tasks
People are often tempted to start their days with their easiest tasks. However, saving the hard jobs for later in the day can mean they don’t actually get finished at all. The best time to do the hard work is first thing, as that is when you have the most willpower. On top of that, getting your least favorite job out of the way is likely to put you in a great mood for the rest of the day!
6. Over-planning
When people have a busy day coming up, they tend to plan every hour of the day in advance so they can fit everything in. However if you start running behind on schedule, you can find yourself becoming stressed out and failing to achieve everything you wanted to do.
Try to plan about five hours of important work to do, and leave the rest of the day to deal with any other issues. This means you get both elements of control and flexibility.
7. Hitting the snooze button
Most people like to hit the snooze button and get an extra 10 minutes in bed. Even though it can be tempting to hit the snooze button every morning, it is actually better for you to get up.
When you first wake up, your body starts releasing alertness hormones to get you up and ready for the day. Every time you go hit snooze, you slow down this process – and as you are only snoozing, it is unlikely you are getting any essential extra sleep anyway.
8. Thinking about the big picture
Having a life or work plan is a fantastic way to make sure you keep progressing towards your goals. However, thinking about the big picture while you’re working can leave you feeling worried and overwhelmed. Save the life planning for when you aren’t working, and while you are working, try to focus on the immediate task you are doing. Every task you do is working towards your goals – slowly but surely, you are on your way!
Amy is a big fan of the Walking Dead and Twiglets. Check out her blog on working from home; https://twentysomethingrecluse.wordpress.com
