Do you often find yourself busy without any actionable results to show how you have spent your time? Everyone aspires to be busy since they see it as a sign of success. As an entrepreneur trying to claim your place in the market and working with limited resources, you may find it inevitable to put more hours into your work. But being busy all the time does not guarantee productivity.
When you are busy, you may get the illusion that the time you have is less than you need making you lose your focus or preventing you from finishing your tasks. In some way, most people associate being busy with attaining success. But it does not. It is productivity that will guarantee your success.
But how do you avoid being busy and start being productive? Here are a few ways you can follow.
Create a Conducive Work Environment
You can only be productive if you create an environment conducive enough to work in. As such, you should pay close attention to the quality of the air you breathe at your workplace since it can impact your health and productivity.
Breathing in polluted air can lead to mental and physical fatigue. Moreover, it can affect your cognitive ability and derail your mood. In fact, it is one of the leading causes of low concentration and an unhappy workplace, further resulting in low work productivity.
It does not matter how big or small your business is. If you expose yourself to polluted air, your work output will be lower. You can, however, improve your workplace productivity by improving the air quality in your workplace environment. It is, therefore, a good idea to invest in a good air purifier such as Molekule. You can learn more about Molekule & air quality here.
Prioritizing your Tasks
When running a business, you have to handle various tasks, and you may feel like you do not have enough time. The problem is not that you may not have enough time, but you may be misusing it.
You need to focus on one priority first. Everything else is secondary. No matter how much work you decide to do, it will never end. Therefore, instead of trying to handle everything at once, structure your day, and prioritize your work accordingly.
As you start every new workday, be clear on what you want to accomplish and move it to the top of your schedule. The main goal is to be intentional about executing and completing that task by the end of the day. To make your work easier, you can delegate other tasks to your teammates.
Take time to Relax
As you work, your goal is not to be always busy but overly productive. Therefore, you should remember to take occasional breaks that you can use to assess your progress and appreciate the work done so far.
By taking breaks, you can note what you need to work faster and get more things done. It can also allow you to re-energize and find better ways to achieve your goals.
Be Frugal About Your Time
How good are you at tracking how much time you spend on a task? Not everyone can accurately estimate the amount of time that passes while handling a specific job. However, you need to seriously consider every minute you spend while working on various tasks to manage yourself better.
You can use modern applications to gauge the time you spend on daily duties such as reading mail, social media, and any other tasks. You can then reorganize yourself and only spend as much time as you should, depending on the task.
Organize your Calendar
Do you have a calendar that details everything that you need to do? If not, you need to adopt it in your work. Having a calendar helps you to track your meetings and deadlines, thus improving your productivity.
However, a calendar does not affect how much more work you may have in the future. It is common to have your schedule full of too many meetings to attend and deadlines to meet. If you do not want to fall into the busy curve that affects your productivity, you should organize your calendar to give yourself time to finish specific essential tasks.
If you have back to back meetings, allow yourself just enough time in between to plan for the next meeting. Remember also to spare some time to breathe and recollect your thoughts. Instead of trying to manage everything in a rush, give yourself enough time to handle a task. Remember, you are the one who is in control of your calendar. Do not let your calendar control you.
Avoid Meetings
It is no doubt that one of the biggest time consumers in the workplace is meetings. According to a survey by the Harvard Business Review done on 182 senior managers, 65 percent of them said that meetings kept them from finishing their tasks. Seventy-one percent also claimed that meetings were inefficient and unproductive.
Attending ineffective meetings is perhaps one of the reasons why it takes longer to complete critical business tasks. Before you can schedule an appointment, you should first determine if you can reach the same goal using other methods such as a phone call, email, or web-based meeting.
Learn to Say No
Your kindness and generosity can be fatal to your business progress. As you continue to succeed in your career, you will get more requests from friends, colleagues, and other people around you.
They will want to take up your time by asking you to help them with something. While you may be inclined to accept every request that comes your way, it will hurt your business productivity. Going out of your way to help other people is not wrong.
However, responding to every request that comes your way will eat out your time for productive work. You need to be clear about your priorities and put yourself first. Have clear goals and a well-defined schedule.
If you have time in-between, you can take on any request that you receive. However, you should make sure it does not conflict with your schedule in any way. It is not wrong to reject other people’s use of your time. The better you get at it, the more productive you may become, allowing you to achieve even more.
Practice Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is one of the most effective leadership tools you can use to increase your employees’ productivity. Learn to encourage, motivate, and reward your employees when they do a good job. You can offer them personal incentives such as a free holiday or an expensive dinner for doing their job well.
The concept of positive reinforcement is simple. By rewarding your employees for meeting their goals, they will be more likely to repeat the same thing. Moreover, by sharing one employee’s success with others, they will want to be more productive and receive a reward.
Reduce your Distractions
Distractions are all around us on a typical workday. When you add modern technology, almost everything around us seems to conspire to make us less productive. It may not be entirely possible to escape distractions altogether, but you can take specific measures to cut them down.
The first step to limiting your distractions is figuring out their trigger. If you spend too much time on your phone, then you should consider switching it off while working. Moreover, you can also schedule specific times during the day to make calls. While evoking a change may not be immediate, you can make use of an app that tracks how much time you spend on your phone in a day.
You can then set a goal to reduce your screen time usage. The change in numbers may be inspiring enough to help you change your habits. If you spend too much time on social media, you can opt to automate your posts to avoid constantly checking in. Rather than completely cutting off social media, you can better approach it by using tools that allow you to optimize your time and focus it elsewhere.
Optimize your Workplace
A stressful work environment affects your productivity and that of your employees. Your work environment means not only your physical surrounding but also the people and the atmosphere around you.
If you want to be productive, you need to feel comfortable in this space. Do you work well in a busy and public area with background noise, or do you prefer a quiet environment? Monitor how the amount of activity around you affects your ability to concentrate on a given task and choose a space that is comfortable to use.
If you prefer a quest environment but cannot find one, you can choose to use earplugs and work in an area where your eyes cannot wander around. If you function better in a noisy environment, but you find yourself in a quiet space, you can get headphones and create a background noise of music as you work.
Summing Up
In today’s busy world, it is easy to fall victim to being busy but not productive. But you do not have to be busy to become productive. Instead of wasting energy trying to handle multiple tasks at once, you need to channel your energy to handling only the intentional and truly important tasks. Moreover, it also helps to make your workplace feel like home to improve your employee productivity.
