Productivity at work is key to your professional and personal advancement. High performance is always appreciated and it’s an attribute you want to be associated with.
However, every day we face challenges that slow us down and prevent us from reaching optimal levels of productivity.
The following five strategies are simple and can be applied immediately. By putting them to use you can become more productive and successful today.
Delegate
This tip is old as management, but some people still have a hard time applying it. Biting more than you can chew is a bad practice that leads to low productivity and even burnout. Learn to let go of the tasks you can delegate and remind yourself that you’re not expected to do everything yourself. Trust your team, or your coworkers, and gain precious time to be more productive at work.
Apply the Two Minute Rule
This concept formulated by David Allen is both powerful and uncomplicated. In fact, you can learn it in the time it takes you to read this paragraph. The principle is simple: If a pending task takes less than two minutes to complete, do it right now. Apply this strategy consistently and you’ll be surprised at how many items from your to-do list you’ll be able to clear in a single day.
Use the Pomodoro Technique
This technique consists in dividing work in segments of 25 minutes followed by breaks of five minutes. Then, every time you complete four long segments, you take a longer break. The method works because it’s easier to convince yourself of doing something you’ve been postponing if you know you’ll do it only during 25 minutes. With many projects, getting started is the hardest part, so this mindset can help you with tasks you find daunting or somewhat boring.
Embrace the Imperfection of a First Draft
This is a writer’s trick: Simply accept the fact that your first draft will be extremely imperfect. This helps because sometimes the idea that fuels procrastination is that things must be perfect and that imperfection should be avoided at all costs. By accepting a degree of imperfection you can free yourself of a burden that may be preventing you from starting an important project. You may not be a writer, but you can also reap the benefits of embracing imperfection as a way to boost your productivity.
Learn to Put Your Phone Away
Smartphones can be both a blessing and a curse. They can help us when it comes to balancing our budget, counting our daily steps, or finding the next novel we want to read. But they also drain our attention and sap our productivity. Be mindful of your cell phone usage and learn to put your device away at will. Developing this skill will take discipline and focus, but the positive impact on your productivity will be evident almost immediately.