Looking to Increase Productivity? Here’s What You Should Be Doing

More and more companies are wanting their employees to do more with less. So where does that leave us? Scrambling to meet deadlines, wearing 20 different hats, answering lots of random emails and phone calls, etc. You get the picture.

This article’s goal is to help you find tips and techniques that can increase your and your team’s productivity. Don’t try and implement all of these at once. Look for a couple that you can try at once and for at least 21 days (the average time it takes for a habit to form).

Make a Daily List of “Crucial Objectives”

Crucial objectives are a list of high-priority goals that you absolutely need to accomplish in order to move your tasks and projects forward. We recommend making a spreadsheet listing your top 5 crucials for the day. This will help you plan the day and help you avoid getting sidetracked by irrelevant or mundane tasks.

Eat Healthy Foods

Eat healthy foods to avoid energy crashes and keep your brain properly fueled. Why? Because our diet is an important factor in boosting our brainpower and determining how productive we are throughout the day.

Just imagine drinking soda instead of clean water – which do you think will help you keep fresh and power through the afternoon in order to finish strong? Junk foods are not only harmful for your overall health, they are also responsible for decreased productivity and energy crashes.

Remember to keep some healthy snacks at your office to stay productive throughout the day.

Exercise on a Daily Basis

Exercise is not only welcomed by your body, but it is also warmly received by your mental wellbeing. According to this article, exercise reduces stress hormones and increases growth factors that are responsible for new neuronal connections.

Try exercising in the morning and night to find out which time works better for your body. You might find it hard to muster up the necessary motivation to go to the gym after a hard day at work so even if you can’t go, you should be at least consistent with your daily exercise.

Start the Most Important Task in the Morning

You’ll find that you tend to avoid your most important tasks. So its better to start working on these tasks first thing in the morning. Once you’re on your way and find a flow, these tasks will stop becoming a nuisance and your overall productivity will increase dramatically.

Mute Your Mobile Phone

Using social media, corresponding through text messages, making phone calls, and sending emails is one of the biggest workplace distractions out there. We’re sure that you must’ve experienced the state of mind where you’re completely focused on the task at hand, only to be interrupted by a phone call or notification.

Remove these pesky distractions by muting your mobile phone, exiting various chat groups, closing your inbox before starting a task that requires your complete focus.

Think Twice Before Doing a Meeting

Have you ever walked out of a meeting only to realize that you just wasted your time? We’re sure that you must’ve experienced at least one throughout your career. Many HR consultants consider business meeting as one of the biggest obstacles to productivity. Its the responsibility of companies to give their employees some tools that can run effective and productive meetings.

Use time tracking apps

As the name suggests, time tracking apps can help users effectively track their time, tasks, and projects.

Effective employee monitoring apps like Stafftimer, can help employees meet deadlines, avoid stress, improve overall productivity & efficiency, and make extra time for themselves. These apps can also help employees maintain a work-life balance by letting them know how productive they have been throughout the day.

Focus on the top 20% of your tasks

The Pareto Principle or 80/20-rule asserts that your focus should be on the top 20% of your tasks. Why? Because in almost all situations, 20% of the inputs are responsible for 80% of the outputs. In order to make good use of your to-do-list, prioritize those 20% tasks that greatly influence your top objectives.

Learn To Say No

Throughout the day, people will inevitably interrupt disrupt your focus in order to get your help or input on an urgent task. But most of the time, these tasks aren’t really urgent and can wait. It’s very easy to say yes and take on more things but that almost always ends up being counterproductive.

Learn to say no more often. This might come off as rude at first but at the end of the day, you’re being judged for your productivity. You need to concentrate on your own tasks and avoid getting sidetracked.