5 Effective Strategies to Boost Work Productivity-The Panagora Blog

 Do you often find your workday twirling out of control? Do you start each day with a plan to get so much done, but accomplish very little at the close of work?

Being efficient at work is no rocket science; however, a one-size-fits-all list on how to be more productive doesn’t always work.

Making small changes to habits will not only improve your level of productivity and efficiency but also allows you to get more quality work done in a shorter period.

This article will walk you through 5 simple but effective strategies that will increase your productivity at work.

Quit Multitasking

Multitasking sounds like a brilliant tactic to perform a lot of tasks at once, but it’s unproductive as it creates distractions and reduces the quality of work.

Our brains are not as good at handling multiple tasks. In fact, some researchers suggested that multitasking can reduce productivity by 40%.

It can be tempting to want to take care of a few tasks at once, especially if these tasks seem small and easy. But it simply doesn’t work like that.

A neuroscience professor Earl K. Miller, while speaking on multitasking said, “multitasking is not humanly possible.

We’re fooling ourselves when we say we can easily juggle phone calls, presentations, and eating lunch. Focus on one task at a time, and you’ll actually end up completing it faster.”

Take a Break

Taking a break at work might sound counterintuitive, but it can help improve concentration and maintain a constant level of performance.

Meanwhile, working on a task without breaks will only lead to a steady decline in performance.

Oftentimes, people mistake working longer hours to mean getting more tasks done, but we never work effectively when we’re burned out, do we?

A five minutes’ walk around the office or a 10 minutes grabbing of that mid-afternoon coffee can help get you back into the task and come out productive.

Minimize Interruptions

According to a University of California Irvine study, “it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.”

What this means is that, for every 15 minutes of peak productivity, you spend 23 minutes and 15 seconds working sub-optimally. 

Although interruptions are nearly impossible to avert entirely, employees must strive to eliminate distractions.

Firstly, eliminating interruptions can come in the form of setting office hours, keeping your door closed, or even turning off your notifications.

Secondly, allowing that colleague into your office to chat may seem innocuous, but such constant interruption can result in a drop in productivity.

Lastly, to achieve work goals, employees and business managers must resist distractions and stick to their work calendars.

Set Deadlines

A well managed schedule helps employees and managers meet their deadlines. 

A deadline is a particular time or day, you must accomplish a task to meet an objective.

For example, you can decide to finish all your daily work calls by 2pm, pick and finish up a book every week, or close a deal per month.

Setting a deadline can help reduce the likelihood of procrastination as well as help complete tasks on time.

What this means is that deadlines help workers commit to a plan of action that will be beneficial in the long term.

For example, if you have an urgent assignment to complete and you don’t want it postponed, you can set a series of deadlines which will help you get started early.

Deadlines can also help you get things done on time by providing you with structure. What this implies is that using time frames can help you plan out your future actions in advance.

For example, if you have to study for a presentation, giving yourself deadlines by which you have to study different slides can help you figure out how many minutes you’ll be spending on each slide.

This will help ensure that you don’t spend too much time on a specific section while neglecting other essential parts of the material.

Follow up on tasks

In today’s fast-paced work environment, the average worker faces multiple priorities. That makes it easy for assignments to slip through the cracks if not properly followed-up.

Following up helps to determine the status of projects or assignments. It can also help to discover challenges or hold-ups on time.

You can track your activities or projects through email, phone call, text, instant messaging, or speaking directly with the person concerned.

Keeping track of tasks serves as a trigger for timely handling of queries, thereby increasing performance and deliverables.