6 Habits That Are Costing You Productivity

Productivity is nothing but a measure of the efficiency of your work. High productivity is crucial as it ultimately leads to higher profits for businesses and greater income for individuals.

Though productivity is important for the growth of a business, there are a number of factors that have a considerable impact on it. You may not believe it but many of your habits have an influence on your work productivity. Let me introduce you to some of them:

#1 Failing to Pre Plan

Not everyone believes in laying out a proper plan before carrying out a task. Some people like to act instinctively and go with the flow. Well, if this is the way you work, this could prove to be a habit you might want to change as this isn’t the wisest approach.

Planning ahead gives an estimate of the time you will require to complete a particular task. Without a clear plan, there is a greater risk of you missing out on a deadline. A better approach will be to systematically plan things out and try to finish them before your estimated time. This way you will never lag behind.

#2 Not Forming Lists

The way we rush in our lives moving one place to another, we are bound to forget doing something important. But, forming a to-do list can solve this problem. If you are not the kind of person who maintains lists, then this bad habit can significantly affect your work.

Making a list is extremely simple. A whiteboard, chalkboard, a piece of paper- anything can be used to make a list. You can also use an app to schedule your tasks.

#3 Getting Distracted

While working from home, it is often difficult to concentrate when your kids are playing around or your family is watching a TV program. Your distraction hampers your work. It is always better to find a quiet place, free of noise to carry on with your work. Also, avoid falling into conversations with family members while working.

Even when you work from your office place, there is a high chance of you getting distracted. Constantly checking for important emails in the middle of a project slows down your progress. Checking for an email is often followed by reading and responding to them.

Another big distraction is your cell phone. Your phone can easily divert you from the track, both at work and at home. Thus, to dodge this, schedule breaks in between especially for checking your emails or maybe a scroll through social media for sometime.

#4 Acting Alone

It’s good to be independent but it’s also okay to seek help at times. This reduces your stress and is a very efficient way of building up healthy relationships at work. By working together, you get more work done and that too in less time.

Burdening yourself and doing everything alone is not a good practice. You must occasionally take help from family, co-workers, and friends. Many of them would even be glad if you ask for help.

#5 Multitasking to cover more work

It has been found that multitasking doesn’t always indicate that more work is being done. On the contrary, it often slows you down. There are some instances where multitasking is good like when you start your system while you are getting a cup of tea for yourself. But in general sense, multitasking is essentially switching between tasks which most of the time break your rhythm.

The reason is that your mind has to read everytime you pick a new task. Though it is not particularly a bad habit, it hampers your productivity at work because everytime you switch tasks, some minutes are lost.

#6 Not Automating Tasks

Automation has increased productivity in almost all industries. If put-o-use wisely, automation can handle almost 45% of repetitive tasks. This also enables the workers to assign their time to higher-value tasks such as problem-solving and developing new ideas.

There are lots of tasks in a company which are simple but extremely time-consuming. For example, a worker needs to take a lot of screenshots daily for maintaining records. Doing it manually is very troublesome. There are various tools available on the internet like Stillio that will allow you to capture websites in an organized way at regular intervals- daily, weekly or monthly as you wish.

These might look like tiny-little habits of your daily life, but if you remove them from your lifestyle – they are capable of bringing some real change.