Businesses are always looking for a way to boost productivity. Some businesses will try almost anything to do so. For the individual, however, managing your productivity is a little less complicated. That’s not to say that it is always simple. Typically, the best way to improve productivity is to improve time management. How does one go about changing their behaviors to improve their productivity? Let’s take a look at a couple of ways.
Keep Track of Your Time
An individual will always think he/she will know how long a certain task will take when they’ve done the task numerous times. Sometimes it surprises them to find out how inaccurate those projections are. In order to definitively know how long tasks take, monitoring how much time they take is a great solution. Once you know how much time you take, you can make a conscious effort to take less time.
Limit Your Exposure to Meetings
What percentage of your meetings, would you say, are a giant waste of time? If that percentage is high, consider that one study found that the average employee spends 31 hours a month in meetings. If you are wasting over 30 hours a month in meetings, cutting that down will most certainly improve your overall productivity.
Work with Reasonable Deadlines
A lot of people work better with a little bit of stress from an impending deadline. Sometimes, however, the deadline is counterproductive. If you are able to set your own deadlines, make sure you leave yourself with a reasonable amount of time to get everything done. This will help stay ahead of the workload.
Set Goals You Can Accomplish
We all want to be good at our jobs, but you need to know your limits. You will want to set reasonable goals and try your best to meet them. Setting unattainable goals may seem like it will foster better results, but it very rarely does.
Take Regular Breaks
Taking regular breaks can actually be great for productivity. Getting away from a task, especially one that creates stress, can help rebuild any lost focus.
Be as Proactive as Possible
The most productive people don’t deal with as many problems. This is largely because they proactively handle situations that create inefficiency. By planning for the worst, you will likely find that the worst never comes.
Attempt to Reduce Interruptions
Interruptions are going to happen, but if they are continuous, distraction is inevitable. Try to maintain focus on one problem at a time, even if the interruption is welcome.
Turn Off Notifications
Notifications can be extremely distracting and can keep people from maintaining focus. By turning off notifications, people aren’t inundated with status updates and erroneous messages and are able to put their all into the tasks at hand.
If productivity is the name of the game, considering these strategies will help. Subscribe to our blog for more great business tips and technology information.
