3 Tips on How to Improve Productivity at the Workplace
Low productivity is a common problem at work, on a personal and team level. These days many professionals struggle to optimise their working processes and be more efficient. However, only a few succeed to build a stable workflow that brings value. Here are some useful tips that will help you bring productivity to another level.
1. Stop Managing Time and Start Managing Work
Get yourself a work management tool that also tracks time, instead of Pomodoro timers and other time-centered solutions. Despite common belief, you are not paid for time, you are paid for the value your work brings to your customer. Use Kanban board software to visualise all of your work and progress, this will take away the stress of trying to remember everything. Plus seeing your progress helps you stay motivated. Other tools like services typing and online editors take the tedious tasks of your hand so have more time to be successful.
2. Full Focus & Single Tasking
If you are to be productive, dedicate 100% of your efforts to the task at hand. Forget about all the other tasks and deadlines. There are plenty of tools letting you limit the use of your browser, specific apps of functions of your computer for a limited period of time. Concentrate and work for as long as you need to finish the task. Don’t try to do a little bit of everything, context switching will make you tired faster and won’t bear any real fruit.
3. Communicate Actively—Do Not Make Assumptions
There is no doubt you can achieve good results with active communication. Assumptions are unacceptable and create confusion. I bet most will agree that projects are complex tasks that consist of many elements such as goals, deadlines, priorities, etc. To keep productivity at the highest level during any project, make sure all of your teammates are on the same page regarding all elements. If there are any misunderstandings, clarify them via active communication. Making assumptions will only create misconceptions, which slows down cycle time and lead time of any given project or task.
Final Words
Being productive is not just a matter of tools and practices but also depends on our personal desire to continuously improve ourselves. So in order to be highly productive, never stop learning.