Here are Nine Mistakes You Make Every Day that Negatively Affect Your Productivity, and you must stop them immediately.
What mistakes negatively affect your productivity?
1. Not making the most of the morning
Every morning you may hit the snooze button over and over again, and try to stay in bed until the last minute before you have to get up. Still, humans are creatures of habit and routine, and morning routines give us a much-needed structure in our lives, and in turn, when you stick to a morning routine, your health and productivity become Better.
Here are some suggestions you can add to your morning routine:
- getting up earlier than others in the house; So that you can spend some time quietly.
- Do not check your mobile phone as soon as you wake up.
- Avoid coffee in the morning, drink a glass of water instead.
- Eat a healthy breakfast.
- Reading, diary writing, meditation, and exercise.
- Define your tasks for the day.
- Review your calendar.
Most importantly, plan your day and prepare for it the night before so that you don't get caught up in the morning, for example you can pack your things and choose your clothes before you go to sleep, and don't forget to stick to a regular sleep schedule.
2. Missing the most productive part of the day
“The saddest thing about time management is the tendency for people to waste the two most important productive hours of the day and spend them doing things they don't want to do,” psychologist Dan Ariely said in response to a question on Reddit: It requires the use of significant cognitive abilities, such as browsing social media, but if we can invest those precious hours, most of us will be able to achieve what we want more successfully”.
And in answer to the question, "When are those precious hours?", he said: “In general, people can be more productive in the morning, and the first two hours after waking up are likely to be the best time to work productively”, while this may vary from person to another.
But psychotherapist Stephen Borgman writes in Psychology Today, "Everyone needs a solid morning routine to relieve stress and maximize their productivity."
Most of us know when we're productive and when we're not, and if you don't, track your time and productivity throughout the day to pinpoint your best productive hours and then spend that time working on the most challenging tasks of the day.
3. Reward yourself the wrong way
Lifehack blogger Amy Johnson writes, “People often decide to reward themselves if they do something they find difficult, like dieting, saving money, exercising, or working, but if the person rewards themselves by buying a new piece of clothing after saving for a week, it will erase the benefit of his achievement, and worse, it may encourage you to abandon your plan completely, because you did not stick to it and let yourself down.”
As a solution, Amy suggests: “Try to think of achieving your goals as the reward in itself; Your goal is to be better, and when you get that, you will be closer to achieving the goal.”
4. Allowing yourself to reach the point of mental exhaustion
You should invest your productive hours in working on tasks that require a lot of mental energy, and remember that this energy and your determination are limited; Therefore, it is better to keep them to spend on important activities and even better is to increase your energy stores during the day. According to entrepreneur Deep Patel, one way to boost your energy during the day is to get rid of the (emotional contagions).
Another way to maintain and boost your energy throughout the day is to block apps on your phone and sources of noise that may distract you while you focus on important work, and take regular breaks, during which you do whatever works for you to recharge your energy and avoid mental fatigue, and if you suffer from mental exhaustion Always, you can apply the Pomodoro Technique; It is a time management method by dividing work time into 25-minute periods of focused work, separated by 5-minute breaks.
5. Not prioritizing
The most important idea to remember from this article is to realize that some things are more important than others, and of course, you have many tasks and responsibilities. Still, you will not be able to accomplish them if you keep increasing their number.
One way to avoid this is to create a list of everything that you must accomplish or want to accomplish, use the principles of time management to reduce the number and leave only the essentials, and then put the tasks that you must accomplish directly; This is because their deadlines are near or you can finish them quickly or contribute to your goals at the top of the list.
As for important and non-urgent tasks, you can postpone them to a later time, while you can delegate urgent but not important tasks. Any other task that does not belong to these classifications should be deleted from your list.
6. Not Rejecting Additional Commitments
Imagine that you are in a highly productive state of mind, and suddenly you hear someone knocking on your door, and then your co-worker walks into your office and asks if you are free for a minute, in that case, if he hasn't an emergency need, you should say no to his request no matter what, and of course you should do this tactfully, for example: you could tell him you're busy and ask if he can come back in an hour when you're free.
This idea applies to any kind of request that drains your time, for example: if you suddenly get an invitation to an unnecessary meeting, decline it, and if you have already agreed to attend a party at the end of the week, remember that you will not have time to attend another social event and don't commit to others; So if you don't have to, or want to do something, say no, so you'll be able to focus on your priorities and avoid taking on responsibilities that are beyond your capabilities.
7. Trying to multitask
In an article, time management expert Howie Jones wrote, “Multitasking may be your favorite way to work on your daily tasks, and logically it may seem like a smart choice. It’s always better to get two done than one.”
Multitasking is a lie, and Howie explains why: “The human brain seems designed to deal with tasks one after the other, and it is impossible to change the way our brains work, so it is better to accept reality and avoid multitasking.”
As a result, when you work on several tasks simultaneously, you will incur irreparable losses in time and efficiency, So focus on one thing, get it done, and then move on to your next task.
8. Focus on time, not results
Too often, we focus on the number of hours we worked, not what we accomplished, but if you think you produced more just because you worked longer, you're wrong. In fact, according to a Stanford University study, productivity starts to decline after working 50 hours a week, it drops so sharply after working 55 hours that it's useless to continue working after that.
Moreover, research by Behance found: “Being more concerned with hours you present in the work place than with achieving and working, creates a culture of inefficiency and anxiety,” and sitting behind your desk until a set time creates a factory-like culture, which loses sight of these basic laws of access to ideas and human nature:
- The brain does not function well when it is tired.
- A person can access ideas whenever he wants.
- A person begins to feel hate towards what he does when he feels that he is forced to work more than his capacity.
Instead, think about what you accomplished during the day and look at it with appreciation, and you can do this easily by creating a list of things that you accomplished so that you see that you were really productive and were not just busy and working without a result.
9. Strive for a balance between your professional and personal life
Perhaps the biggest misconception about professional-life balance is that you can divide your time equally between them; Where you spend an equal amount of time between work and home, but the truth is that this is not realistic, the balance between professional and personal life is about doing the right thing at the right time.
for example: if you have a project that you must finish by the end of the week, you should focus the most of your time and energy on that project, but if your child needs to be hospitalized, that should take precedence over everything else.
Sometimes, if you want to balance professional and personal life, you have to find something in life that is worth it and is a strong enough motivator to encourage you to do so, for example: If you want to run a marathon, training will boost your confidence and force you to change your life for the better, or if you want to learn a new language, the language learning program will balance your life better than it is now.
In an article, motivational speaker and coach Amanda Abella writes, “The best goal of balancing your professional and personal lives is to complement them, which means integrating your work and life so that they complement each other rather than compete for your time.”
Add comment