Most people experience the challenge of things getting in the way of them being productive during the course of their workday.
There are three main culprits- time suckers- you should eliminate from life as soon as you can. Whether it’s personal, work-related, or social, these three things waste your time and disrupt your productivity efficiency.
1. Unnecessary Interruptions
Most people are not able to switch quickly from task to task, yet interruptions are common problems people encounter when trying to improve their productivity efficiency.
In order to remove disruption from your day, create and stick to a schedule for each thing that you need to do. One simple for effective way is create a "to do list" and just stick to it.
Don't put more than 5-7 tasks on the list and make sure they are important things that will move you along the way of progress. Concentrate and get the most important on the list first and then check if off or draw a line through it. This alone will give you a feeling of accomplishment and control.
Ensure that you inform those around you not to interrupt you during specific times of the day or, if you have to, put up a specific sign like "Please Do Not Disturb." Even if you work in a cubicle, you can stop most interruptions with some sort of signal to your coworkers.
2. Lack of Planning
When you don’t plan something out, you are just winging it. When you sit down and write out a plan, it gives you an opportunity to test the waters and to anticipate roadblocks, bottlenecks, and other issues that cause time management issues throughout your day.
Every day you should save some time from your day to engage in short term, medium-term, and long-term planning. Whether it’s losing weight, getting your home organized, or starting and running a business, plans made with SMART goals will always perform better than going by the seat of your pants.
3. Thinking You Have to Do It All Yourself
It doesn’t matter who you are you really don't have to do everything yourself. If you’re raising kids, starting a business, running a business, or running a household, there are people to help.
You can engage your spouse, your significant other, your children, or other family members to assist but you can also pay people to do the things you don’t want to do. Out source work to someone else for example.
Believe it or not, someone else might do the task much better than you can do it. Concentrate on your strengths and let someone else do things that you aren't good at but you can supervise to make sure the end result is what you want.
Don’t forget that you can also use technology to boost your productivity and gain more time in your day.
For example, if you automate your bill paying, savings, and investments tasks with automation through an app that can remove hours of work each month from your schedule.
Getting automated is not and becoming more time efficient and ramping up your productivity efficiency is not difficult. Automation apps to perform many tasks to save time can be found on websites like Code Canyon or Appsumo.
Conclusion
Productivity efficiency is a matter of setting goals and having the right mindset to stick to what will keep you from being distracted and dedicated to being as productive as possible.
Think of how applying the above tactics on a daily basis will help you manage your time better.
Once you stop these time suckers, you’ll start seeing a massive difference in your productivity. The benefits will be less stress while also getting more done.