Do you struggle managing your time in the office? Do you feel you don’t get the best results from your day at work? Here are 5 tips to ensure you increase productivity and consistency during your day. If you want even more tips, make sure to read our Infographic ’10 ways to beat the stress at work’.
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Walk into work at least 15 minutes before the start of the working day.
Productive people will calmly enter work at least 15 minutes before the day starts, in order to review what work needs to be done, and create a clear focus for the day ahead. If you scramble into work 5 minutes before work starts, you are already rushing around starting the day behind the curve and more likely to be less efficient and lack results.
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Put your mobile phone on silent or turn it off!
Mobile phones are notorious for distracting us during the day at our desk. Put your mobile phone on silent in order to decrease the chances of distraction whilst increasing overall workload. They say it takes you 20 minutes to get into the zone of productivity, so if you are checking your phone every 10 to 15 minutes, at what point during the day are you focused on the task at hand?
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Plan your day ahead, and always have a to-do list
The key to productivity is organisation. Having a to-do list is the most important thing to create in order to hit targets and be time efficient. Prioritising work and sticking to a rigid time schedule separates “busy people” and “productive people”. Visualising the day ahead is a great way to create a mindful state to the start of your day. When en route to work, envisage yourself having a successful day, visualise positive images in your head and channel these images into your workflow during the day. Mentally rehearse what you have to do for the day and program your mind subconsciously. Then when the time comes for you to perform each task that has been visualised, you will have already thought of how it will end in success.
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Checking emails in designated time blocks.
Referring back to the point of coming into work at least 15 minutes before the working day will go a long way to negating this common working problem. If you envisage important emails from clients or customers, you can then plan to reply to this before your working day has started in order to negate distraction during core working hours. If you allocate certain time frames during the day to check your emails, the result will show an increase in productivity and less overtime worked upon the finishing of your working day.
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Serve your own needs before attending to others, and learn to say no.
Productive people know the importance of fulfilling their own needs, and therefore business needs, before helping others. They determine their own priorities first and slot in other people’s requests later. It may seem selfish in the short-term, but overall in order for you to be at your most productive you must fulfil your own targets in order to create consistency and efficiency in the work-place. Fellow colleagues will understand if you can’t help them straight away. So react in a polite manner when asked for help, and reply with “I will be finished this task in 20 minutes, if you want me to help then I am more than happy too? We all have common goals in work, so in order to help other people you must be able to maintain and help your own workflow first.
Time-management is a key element to achieving high targets and results, implementing simple rules like turning your mobile phone on silent could be a successful starting point in turning you into a productive worker. According to (Lifehack 2015) “Time is limited. If I can make good use of it, I’ll be much more successful. So I’m going to be more productive.” There are only 24 hours in a day, set motions in place in order to make your time more successful no? Oprah and Obama have the same amount of time as the rest of us, and they certainly get a lot done during the day.
Make sure to read our post on NuCalm, to get some extra calming techniques to better manage your working day.
