Staying on top of our your workload can be quite challenging at times and often we are left feeling overwhelmed by our ever-growing to-do lists. So how can we keep our productivity inertia going in order to remain in control of our work?
We decided to share with you clever tips on how to reinvent your approach to productivity and get things done efficiently!
Pyramid of productivity
Remit Sethi, an American entrepreneur and financial advisor, urges us to visualise productivity as a pyramid. He breaks it down into three levels: fundamentals, psychology and details.
Fundamentals make up the foundation of the productivity pyramid. These include major factors such as your surrounding environment, sleeping and dietary habits.
The middle level composes your personal psychology: your emotional resilience, ways you handle problems, your degree of positivity and mechanism of prioritisation.
Sethi positions ‘details’ at the top of the pyramid and argues that they are, in fact, the least important level.
Reinventing your approach to productivity is definitely not an easy task. Take a step back to reevaluate your work techniques and try these clever tips to enhance your productivity.
Advice on Fundamentals
Get 7.5-8 hours of sleep a night
Make sure you get between 7.5 and 8 hours of sleep every night! It doesn’t come as a surprise that getting your ‘beauty’ sleep will boost your level of concentration and problem-solving skills. Accordingly, sleep deprivation leads to reduced efficiency and productivity, errors, and high stress levels.
Keep your work space neat
Keeping your work space clean and tidy has been proven to have a greater effect on your efficiency. In fact, a study in Harvard Business Review showed that a disorganised work environment is highly disruptive, while people with clean desks were found to be more persistent and productive with their work tasks.
Create a meal plan
It’s often the case that we don’t sustain healthy dietary habits during work. Be thoughtful about your nutrition and create a weekly meal plan. Take some time on Sunday to prepare a meal (or two) for each day of the working week. This is a great way to ensure that you make healthy choices and free up your time.
Advice on Psychology
Don’t be a perfectionist
Perfectionism helps us to always aim for higher standards, but sometimes it can make you more obsessive rather than productive. Fretting over details, investing an unreasonable amount of time and setting impossible-to-reach goals can mislead you into forgetting what the bigger picture is.
Instead, work smart and set clear boundaries for yourself. In addition to building your weekly priorities, why not also create a list of realistic outcomes you are aiming to achieve. This will help with keeping things in perspective, while also maintain your productivity levels high.
Think positive
Practising positive thinking is the best way to tackle your workload. I’m not talking about being bubbly or happy all the time, but about being confident within yourself and believing you can face any challenges effectively.
Advice on Details
Follow the 2-Minute Rule
If you have a task at hand that takes only 2 minutes or less, do it straight away! This can be applied to both your personal and work life – for instance, clearing up any clutter on your desk, responding to an email or doing the dishes after your meal. So, instead of postponing this or risk forgetting about it, why not do it now?
Remove any distractions
Firstly, you need to identify what distracts you. After that..avoid it at all cost! According to research by CareerBuilder, the five biggest productivity killers in the workplace are:
- Mobile phones and personal texting
- Staying on the internet (e.g. news, shopping, games)
- Gossiping
- Checking social media
- Constant emails
Take short breaks
Working on a task for a longer period of time without taking a break makes it easy for you to get lost in your own work and lose your focus. That’s why taking short breaks throughout the day is likely to increase the quality of your work as it allows you to refocus.
Take a 5-10 minute break at least every hour! During that time you can make a cup of coffee, walk around or stretch.
Set a life admin day
Choose a day in the week to do all the boring chores, such as cleaning, doing your laundry, grocery shopping and meal-prepping. Once you have all of that out of your way, you can enjoy the freed up time during the rest of your week.
Try these changes for 30 days straight and you’ll be equipped with an arsenal of awesome productivity habits!
