Habits that reduces our productivity, focus and efficiency

What is Productivity: It’s getting the results you want with less time and effort. When you’re trying to understand how to be productive, what you’re really seeking is a way to achieve your goals while having time to spend on what matters. It is a way to measure your efficiency. Now lets discuss few habits that reduces our productivity and efficiency.

10 Habits that reduces our productivity:

Today we will discuss 10 activities or habits that reduces our productivity, focus and efficiency:

1) Getting lost on social Media

In today’s time, Digital distraction is biggest problem. We should switch off all our social media notifications while working and we should check our phone and notification only when we take a short break.

Do this for a week and I am sure your concentration and productivity will increase.

The comfort zone is a mental state that does not allow personal growth. It may be okay to be there for a while, but if you want to continue to grow and adjust to new situations, this is not a place to stay. This is a dangerous habit that reduces our productivity and we take time to find that out.

To know more about how comfort zone affect us and how to come out of it read below posts:

Comfort Zone is a danger zone, nothing grows there

How to come out of comfort zone…

3) Always aiming for perfection

Too much perfection kills your productivity and you will not have enough time to complete other tasks in hand. That’s why it is said that “Done is better than perfect because perfect never gets done”

Perfectionism may seem like a good trait initially, but it is dangerous to both your mental health and sanity.

4) Sitting down all day

 Here are few simple changes you can make to add activity at work, increasing workplace productivity among employees.

1. Have walking meetings
2. Stand or walk while on conference calls
3. Print documents on a printer that’s across the office or on another floor
4. Take the stairs
5. Walk or bike to work
6. Walk during your lunch break

The following are some tips to keep in mind when you are sitting

• Don’t lean forward at your desk
• Your shoulders should be relaxed
• Keep your arms close to your sides
• Bend your elbows at 90 degrees
• Keep feet flat on the floor

5) Not enough sleep

Simply put, without adequate sleep, you are going to tire more easily, and lose energy to function. And when you don’t have the energy required to do your work, productivity suffers. However, it’s not just your physical energy that suffers when you don’t sleep. Your mental energy takes a hit as well.

6) Over-analyzing everything

When you over-analyze a situation, the repetitive thoughts, anxiety, and self-doubt decrease the amount of working memory you have available to complete challenging tasks, causing your productivity to plummet even further.

7) Saying “Yes” to everything

Saying “Yes” to everything may seem nice at the time of saying, but when you will, start working on those tasks you will realize that, you will not be able to complete and justify all the tasks. Moreover, once this will start happening you will lose confidence and trust of your Manager and more importantly in yourself.

Therefore, it is very important to say “No” and by saying No to one task, you are definitely making room for saying yes to another important task.

8) Not taking breaks

Yes, it is true that if you want to improve your productivity at work, then taking breaks are necessary. You need to take some breaks during the day to get refreshed and rejuvenated, but not too many that you get distracted along the way. The best advice is to schedule your breaks beforehand.

9) Trying to do multitasking

It is now scientifically proved that our Brain is not wired for multitasking and when we try to do more than one thing at a time, our attention is divided too much.

Therefore, to increase the productivity you need to focus on one task at a time and give that task your undivided attention and energy and you will be able to complete that task in much faster and much better way.

10) Taking long time to make simple decisions

Taking the time to weigh the pros and cons of an important decision is one thing; taking extreme lengths of time to make a decision on a very simple matter is entirely another.

Deciding what food to order should be a simple and quick decision; I have seen people taking too much time in that. What I am trying to explain here is that we should have a habit of differentiating simple daily decision from more complex one. Ask yourself, “Will my decision really matter in a week or months’ time.

Tools to increase our productivity

You can find few wonderful tools which can surely increase your productivity.

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/03/26/productivity-tools

Quotes on Productivity

Let me conclude the post with few wonderful productivity quotes:

“It’s not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.” –-Tony Robbins

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” –Tim Ferriss

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” –Stephen Covey

“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.” –John F. Kennedy