With only eight hours in an average working day, it can be difficult getting everything you set out to do that day accomplished. And for those who work paycheck to paycheck, this can lose you necessary money in the process. If only there was a way to be more productive at your job…
1. Stop Multitasking
Many people think that by doing multiple things at once, they’ll get more done in the long run. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Multitasking causes your brain to split into different thoughts, trying to keep up with everything you’re doing. By only focusing on one thing, you give your mind a straight and narrow shot to completing this single task. Keep doing this, and you’ll have everything on your to-do list finished before you’ve even taken a break for lunch.
2. Take Breaks
With everything you have to do, you must be mentally exhausted by the end of the day. After each task, or perhaps after a set of tasks, you need to let your mind wander. Check your networking sites, or your email. Take a walk or a fifteen-minute cat nap. Eat a snack or talk to someone – lord knows you need social interaction after just a few hours working.
The important thing is to forget what you just completed and what you’re about to do, and relax. Give your brain that needed break and get the blood flowing again. Then get back to work.
3. Leave the Office for Lunch
Do you really want to be the kind of person that’s so busy that they eat lunch at their desk, fork in one hand and still typing with the other? No. No one in their right mind does. You do not want to spend your entire adult life crammed inside an office – especially on your lunch break.
You’ll increase your productivity overall by going out to eat, or even going home to eat – just as long as you leave work and take a longer break than usual. You need brain food, and it’s defeating the purpose if you’re steadily burning energy working while you’re eating.
4. Set Deadlines and Follow Through with Them
The human psyche was built on deadlines; getting the job done within a certain time frame. Without deadlines, nothing would be finished. Everyone would constantly procrastinate because they would no longer have the drive to get anything done.
Organize a schedule and set a deadline for each task you have to complete. Write in your breaks, your lunch, and most importantly, when you get off.
And follow this schedule to a tee.
You need to have that anxiety of getting a job completed before it’s too late drilled into you again and again. If you don’t complete a project on time, if you cut into your break or lunch time, you’ve failed. Don’t make it impossible, though. Know your limits. You can’t write a one-thousand word article in two minutes, so don’t make a schedule with impossibilities like that in it.
Another thing: go home. Don’t stay later to get more tasks finished. You’ve got tomorrow to do that. Over time, your productivity will increase because you know you won’t allow yourself extra time at the end of the day to complete whatever you didn’t get finished during the work hours.
5. Don’t Put Things Off
When you’re told to do something, deal with it immediately. Postponing it will only make it more difficult for you to complete in the long run. By getting tasks finished as soon as possible, you’re more likely to complete more tasks throughout the day, earning you productivity points along the way.
6. Clean Up
An organized desk is a happy desk, and an organized person is someone who’s going to have the most productivity at work. If you learn how to organize your work-space properly, you won’t waste time looking through things, losing things, and ultimately slacking off on your job. Do this with your email as well, categorizing your inbox into separate files where you can place messages to easily find in the future. Do this with everything in your life, and you’ll be one very productive person.
7. Say “No” to the Tasks You Can’t Finish
If you’re asked to do a task you’re unfamiliar with, will have trouble with, or otherwise can’t complete in a timely manner, then deny it. Let them give it to someone who can, and get the tasks you’ll be able to work fastest and easiest with. Some struggle to say this simple, one-worded sentence, but once you get it out there the first time you’ll not only become more productive in your working life, you’ll also gain confidence. Trying to face those tasks you know nothing about will only waste your time, when you could be using it to achieve greater things. Say “no” in the face of adversity.
Though it can be difficult to perform more productively at your job, it is possible. Learning how to not procrastinate is the first step in achieving life-long career success. With performing the right steps to increase the amount of productivity in an average work day, you’ll accomplish the greater things in life faster than you could’ve imagined.
About the Author
Rachel is a contributing author at Survey Examiner, a website dedicated to teaching its visitors how to distinguish legitimate paid survey sites from the various scams. Stop by for more information on productivity, online work, and more.
