7 effective tips to increase your workplace productivity in 2018

You left for your workplace in the morning like a hero. With the hope of getting a lot of things done. But you came home tired and with the niggling thought that you could have done better than that.

You’re not alone. Workplace productivity is one of the most important things in any workplace. Except you don’t love your work, you always want to increase the quality and quantity of work you can do daily.

Whether you’re a very effective worker, or a mediocre one, there is always room for improvement. No man is perfect and therefore the need for constant improvement. The extent of what man can achieve is limitless.

Therefore, this is an important question you must ask yourself today: How can I become more productive at my workplace?

In this post, I’m going to be sharing 7 tips you can apply to increase your productivity:

1.                  Set a goal

If you always go to your workplace without goals of what you want to achieve daily, then you have no way of saying you have achieved much for a day. There is a saying that for someone without a destination, any path is the way.

Source: Pixabay

When you set goals for a day, it’s a form of daring yourself. The last time someone dared you to do something remarkable, what did you do? You probably took up the challenge just to show you’re capable.

This is what goals can do for you. Goals dare you to achieve. This gives you a kind of focus that is usually absent without setting goals.

The key to setting goals though, is to be specific. Vague goals are difficult to achieve. For instance, setting a goal of selling 50 bags of rice is different from setting a goal of selling many bags of rice.

Setting a goal of 50 bags makes you more accountable. It’s easy to be unaccountable with the second goal because it’s not specific. 20 bags are many, 30 are many, 40 are many. But they’re different numbers and this makes it more difficult to know if you have been productive.

Goal setting is an activity that would probably take about five minutes daily. This 5 minutes, however, could shape and streamline your actions for a particular day.

According to a study by Asmus, Karl, Mohnen, and Reinhart, even without financial incentives, goal setting improves worker performance by 12 to 15 percent compared to the situation where no goals were defined.

2.                 Make a plan

When you set a goal, do you go back to sleep and dream about the goals achieving themselves? NO. You need to have a plan in place to execute your goals.

What’s the time allocated for the tasks you’ll be engaging in for the day? How do you finish each task during the period of time set aside for it? Are there tools you need to perform the tasks?

Making these plans allow you to visualize the day even before you go through it. Making plans allow you to anticipate the possible obstacles to the achievement of your goals. It helps you to manage your time like a pro.

Having a plan in place for your day enables you to go through the day without having to brainstorm every few minutes about the next thing you should be doing.

According to Brian Tracy in his book Eat The Frog, 10 – 12 minutes invested in planning your day will save at least 2 hours of wasted time and effort throughout the day.

3.                 Help your coworkers

It may look counterintuitive to tell you to help your coworkers while you’re busy trying to achieve your own goals. But it is a sound advice. No man, no matter how big his/her achievements are, is an island. No man has gotten to a high place without the help of people.

When you help people, then other people will also help you. When you help your coworkers to be more productive, they also help you to be productive. An adage says if you walk alone, you walk fast but if you walk with others, you walk far.

What can you do today that will help your coworkers to be more productive? It can look like a daunting question but it is a question you must ask and answer. If you help people who work with you, or even your friends, they will be more receptive to do their best to assist you.

McKinsey reports that productivity improves by 20 – 25 percent in organizations with connected employees.

According to Zig Ziglar, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

4.                 Watch your time

What is the most important thing you need at your workplace? Answer that question honestly. You may be tempted to say skills. But I firmly believe it is time. Can you show your skills if you have no time to do it?

In fact, this not only applies to the workplace but even to life. Have you seen a very skillful man who was able to show his/her skills without time? When you watch a final sports match, there are great players who have limited time to show their expertise.

If they fail to show it during this limited time window, they lose. No matter how skillful they may be. Being skillful doesn’t directly result in optimum productivity. You must also be able to show your skills during the time given to you.

You can run 100 metres and I can too. But we probably are not going to win Olympics. Because we can’t do it at the required time. The issue of managing your time judiciously is not only applicable to sports.

It is also applicable to the work you do daily. When you watch your time, you’re able to do more in less time. Let’s look at two workers. They have the same level of skills in their job. One worker is able to perform 1 task daily while the other performs 3 tasks daily.

By the end of 260 working days, a worker has performed 260 tasks while the other has performed 780 tasks. This looks like a wide gulf and it really is. But it widened a bit daily.

Watch your time today and you can increase your productivity a little bit. This little bit compounded daily will be the edge you need. When you spend your time wisely you’re able to do more in less time, you’re able to obey Parkinson’s law which states that: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, employees waste about 40 percent of their work time.

James Clear said:  “Small habits don't add up, they compound. You don't need to be twice as good to get twice the results. You just need to be slightly better.”

5.                 Eliminate the distractions

You really want to be productive. God knows you really want to. But you are prevented by many obstacles. And when your boss complains bitterly for the thousandth time about your low productivity, you tell yourself it was unintentional. You really wanted to do more.

But you find yourself spending too much time talking with your coworkers or too many minutes checking your email. Maybe you attend too many meetings or always take a peek at Facebook during work.

According to statistics, the average worker spends 13 hours on emails alone, which means 28 percent of the work week is taken up by emails alone. 96 percent of workers say unnecessary emails waste their time. You must reduce these activities.

To take that step today, you must intentionally eliminate the distractions obstructing your productivity. Distraction sounds like a word that is bitter in taste. But the truth is that most distractions are actually enjoyable.

In fact, it is painful to eliminate distractions and that is why most people never do it. This is not to tell you to eliminate distractions completely as that is impossible. The truth is that a little distraction is necessary after hours of grueling work.

But distractions must be minimized to the lowest level. Are you able to concentrate on a task for an hour, or 30 minutes, or 5 minutes or even 30 seconds? The attention span of an average person today is 8 seconds. This is why you must eliminate your distractions today to increase your productivity.

Gallup finds that employees who are engaged are 27 percent more likely to report ‘excellent’ performance. Business 2 community also found that companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202 percent.

Few workers are doing it and that is even a more important reason you should do it.

6.                 Look for feedback

Do you need to wait until your boss comes to criticize your work? You don’t need to. You can seek for the criticism. Or if criticism sounds too bad for you, you can call it feedback.

As a worker, there are some things you may never see about your work. There are some productivity hacks you can only get from the external eyes. Ask your boss, or even your coworkers what they think you can do to improve your productivity.

Ask them what they think you should add to your work or remove to increase your productivity. This can give you precious information that you can apply to increase your productivity.

Another way of asking for feedback is to ask effective workers how they managed to be productive and how they increase their productivity.

According to clearcompany, 43 percent of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once in a week.

7.                 Analyse your workday

How many tasks did you plan to achieve today? How many did you actually achieve? What are the obstacles you encountered that you never anticipated? How can you improve tomorrow?

An important part of your workday is to bring up your daily achievement against your daily goals and plans. Many times you may be unable to achieve all the goals you set for a day. You don’t have to feel bad because of that.

It is normal. Analysing your day will help you to troubleshoot the faulty parts of your plan. It also helps you to see the things you’re doing well. You can then do more of the things you’re doing well and eliminate the flaws in your plan.

Conclusion

Increasing your productivity at work is a difficult task. Not because you’re unable to do it one day when it is needed. But because you’re unable to repeat a highly productive day for many consecutive days.

Consistency is the key. When you commit to increasing your productivity today, you must be consistent. There is no lasting increase in productivity without consistency.

If you’re going to increase your productivity by a little bit today, that is no problem, so far you will stick with it till the rest of the year 2018. If you can do that, the results will convince you to continue taking steps towards an increase in productivity.

Do you really want to excel in your career in 2018? There is no better way than improving your productivity. Have a productive year 2018.

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