15 Ways You Can Increase Your Productivity At Work

When you want to be more productive at work first you need to be doing your best, be prepared, organised, systematic, and methodical. It is important that you are doing your best to accomplish everything that needs to be done in a timely manner. When you know that you are working efficiently you will then be able to work on increasing your productivity at work.

Create a To-do List

When your days start coming to an end take a few minutes to make yourself a to-do list for tomorrow. Your to-do list should have specific items that you want to accomplish on the next day. Estimate how much time you need to finish each task, but you have to be realistic and give yourself enough but not too much time to get it done. Writing down what you need to do will help you manage your time and make sure that nothing will be forgotten. You can make your to-do list either on paper or on your phone. Every morning before you head to work give you a to-do list a quick glance just to remember everything that needs to be done. As the day is going by and you are finishing your tasks cross them off as you finish so you know that you completed them. If you aren't able to make them every night you can make them in the morning before you start your work.

Block off Time on Your Calendar

The simplest method to make sure that you are working efficiently is to schedule time blocks on your calendar. By creating those blocked times you are letting people know that they can't schedule a meeting or other assignments over them. That way you are protecting your time which will lead to you being more productive because you will be able to focus on the thing that you are doing at that time. Just like with a to-do list you need to estimate how much time you need to finish each task. Creating scheduling strategies is really important for improving productivity.

Create and Follow a Daily Routine

Creating a routine that will be perfect for you can take some time. A routine that works for someone might not work for you and that is completely normal. The more you twerk it the more perfect it will get. Make small improvements every day until you create and personalise it so that it will make you more productive. Follow every part of your daily routine and identify all the things that you like and don't like. As you keep repeating your patterns every day while making corrections, adjustments, and improvements along the way is a great way to make it perfect. Your daily routine starts from the time that you wake up, get ready for the day, leave for work, arrive, doing your work, short breaks, lunch breaks, going back to work, and going home. Your daily routine needs to be planned down to every activity you are repeatedly doing each day. 

Take Short Breaks

One of the well-known ways of boosting your productivity levels is by taking small breaks. It is best that you take at least two small breaks during your workday, not including the lunch break. One short break should be in the morning and one in the afternoon. Taking a short break will help you recharge your body, it will increase your concentration and boost your productivity and motivation. Another great thing that you happen when you take short breaks is that you will prevent yourself from burning out and being fatigued. Another great thing that can boost your creativity and productivity is caffeine. That’s the reason why many business owners choose to install quality coffee machines for businesses. Having a break with a cup of coffee in your hands will make you a more productive worker and at the same time, it will influence socialising with your colleagues. All that will result in a better work environment. 

Get a Right Amount of Sleep

As we all know sleep deprivation has a really bad effect on your performance at work. The lack of sleep will decrease your concentration, memory, and logical reasoning. That is because your prefrontal cortex gets vulnerable if it experiences a lack of sleep. Any task that requires logical reasoning will be harder to do. Therefore it is important then you get seven to nine hours if you are an adult according to the National Sleep Foundation. If you are not getting that much sleep every night try taking a nap during the day to make up for the lack of sleep and boost your productivity.

Avoid Any Distractions and Time Wasters

Even when you are not at work if you are trying to do something and there are distractions you will spend twice more time then needed. After you have been distracted you will need some more time to get focused again. Some of the typical distractions while at work are chatting with colleagues, gossiping, text messages, and social media, browsing the internet, or anything that might distract you. The first step in getting rid of distractions is knowing what they are. Once you are aware of them then you need to build up your tolerance and resist the urge, tune out everything, and eliminate your distractions. Put your phone on airplane mode and check your messages only on breaks. There are so many ways that you can overcome browsing the internet and staying away from social media during the time that you need to be productive. You can install browser add-ons that block any social media on your computer for a period of time. If there is a noise that is distracting you, you can put noise-canceling headphones, and if someone is distracting you just tell them that you are busy and that you can talk right now. Not in a rude way, just let them know that you are working on a tight schedule or that you have urgent tasks. 

Do One Thing at a Time Don't Try To Multitask

In order to be productive, you need to work on one thing at the time and don't try to multitask. When you are giving all your attention to one single this you are more engaged and the quality of your work is better. Once you've completed one task you move onto another one. It is great to mix your tasks so you create excitement and break the monotony of doing the same tasks. When you are doing many things at the same time it takes a lot of focus in order to do them right. So instead of doing many tasks without caring about what you are doing and in most cases having to fix them later. It is better to dedicate your focus, time, energy, and concentration to each separate task and do them right. It will not only bring up the quality of your work, but you will also be more productive. 

Decide To Be Productive

The most important thing that you need to do in order to be productive is to decide that you need to take that extra step to be better. After you have made that decision you need to ask yourself at what performance level are you at right now and where you want to be. You need to analyze the factors that have been stopping you from reaching your full potential. The usual productivity killers are not relisting how much time you need to do in order to complete a task, putting too many things on your to-do list, not being organised, being distracted, procrastinating and being interrupted. 

Don’t Overbook Yourself

When you are creating your to-do lists and blocking your schedule it can be easy to overbook yourself. You have to be realistic and know that there are a limited number of things that you can accomplish in one day. Look at your tasks and your capability and then create a schedule accordingly, so you can work comfortably and not be rushing to finish everything planned. When you overbook yourself not only will the quality of your work be whose but you will also miss deadlines, be stressed out, fatigued, and mad. When you spread yourself too thin you just won't be as efficient as all are expecting. In most cases, you will let people who are relying on you down. 

Make Sure to Back up Your Work Regularly

There is nothing more heartbreaking and discouraging than working on your tasks for hours and then losing it because you didn't back them up. Having to redo something that you already have done will waste your valuable time that could be used for something else. You can lose all of your work if the power goes out, the internet breaks or simply messes up and overwrites your file or deletes it. You have to get into the habit of hitting save every couple of minutes when you are working on your task no matter how simple or complicated it is. Save your work on both computers and online drives, so if your computer dies you can still have all your work saved online. 

Avoid Procrastinating

As we probably all know that procrastination is our worst enemy. It occurs when you are putting off doing something that you are supposed to be getting done. It involves not looking forward to doing a task that is difficult, long, or just boring and because of that postponing it until you have no more options except getting it done. People are usually procrastinating because they lack motivation, fear of failure, poor planning or simply having the bad habit of doing things at the last minute. In order to be productive, you must break this bad habit. 

Personalize and Decorate Your Work Area

This is a super simple way to make you more productive and happy when you are at work. This will make your office look fun and nice so you will be looking forward to working instead of dreading it. Creating a new environment will make you feel relaxed and more organised. Before you get into decorating your office you have to make sure that there aren't any rules that forbid you from doing so. It is very important that you keep your decorations simple and tasteful because you don't want to have decorations that will distract you. 

Improve Your Skills

Improving your skills and expertise is a good investment of time because it will help you be more productive as you will know more things and feel better about yourself. When you have more skills it will help you do your tasks more efficiently, therefore, you will put yourself up for possible promotion because you are proving that you can do more challenging work. 

Use Your Commute Time to Your Benefit

If you are commuting every day to work you can use it to your benefit and boost your productivity. If you are driving to work you can use that time to listen to audiobooks that will help you learn something new or listen to a podcast. But if you are taking a train or community any way that doesn't involve you driving you can work on some tasks before you get into work.  

Finish What You Start

When you know you have unfinished work it will weigh you down and make you less effective. If you have unfinished work it will cause you to be stressed out to worry and be anxious. It will become really overwhelming to constantly be thinking about fishing all of your incomplete tasks. There are so many reasons why there is so much uncompleted work and some of them are not knowing how to finish them, underestimating how much time you need to finish, running out of energy, or even perfectionism. The feeling of knowing that you have to finish many big tasks all at once will cause you to shut down. Then the temptation to just give up and not do them will be hard to resist. 

Being productive at work takes commitment, self-discipline, and determination. In order to improve your productivity, you need to be aware of your flaws and get things done despite how challenging the tasks might be.