In order to be more productive, you must minimize distraction and increase efficiency. Making these two changes alone will drag up your productivity levels whilst simultaneously reducing your stress levels and tiredness levels. If only these changes were simple to make. In order to achieve a productivity boost while reducing burnout, there is a range of different things you’ll need to implement into your daily life.
Let’s take a look below at our seven ways to maximize productivity while also reducing any signs of burn out.
You Can’t Do Two Things at Once. So Stop.
Everyone loves attempting to do multiple tasks at once because it seems like two projects are being completed at the same time. Though, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only will your quality of work be lower, but you’ll have taken longer to do both tasks at ‘once’ than if you did them separately.
The truth is, when we multitask, we spend more time going back and forth between tasks than we do working on them. You’re far better off focusing on just one task at a time, doing a great job and moving on to the next one. This reduces stress levels too because it gives your mind a break.
Breaks Increase Productivity
Contrary to what almost most of us believe, taking breaks is the key to being more productive and also reducing burn out. When we work long hours, we do get more done, though we’re also completely burned out and unable to do any quality work the next day. That means you’ve almost lost an entire day of work simply to get a single task, or group of tasks, done in a single day.
Taking short 15-minute breaks at work to go out and get a coffee or have a snack is the perfect type of break you should be incorporating into your daily schedule. It gives you time to get your mind off what you were doing, refreshes your mood and also gets you out of the office or workspace. You’ll come back refreshed, motivated and back on track to do what you do best.
Reward Yourself More Often
If you’ve ever worked on a large week-long project, or something bigger, you’ve likely only set one big goal – and that was to finish the project on time. Although this is a good motivator, it also leaves gaps for you to become unmotivated during the process. In order to keep yourself going and motivated you should integrate smaller daily goals. This way you’ll be completing goals more frequently, and you or your team will be able to see how far you’ve come during the day.
The easiest way to complete this step is to break projects into smaller chunks. Outline what needs to be done in one day, complete it, then take a break. By doing this, you’ll be staying on track and also reducing any chance of overworking or burning out. Taking breaks to reward yourself and reflect on what you’ve achieved is also going to increase your confidence in completing the task, as well as boosting your motivation to do even more.
Implement an Office Snack System
This tip is fantastic if you want to keep yourself and your team sustained throughout the day without needing everyone to leave the office to get food. Having snack stations set up in the office provides a central place for everyone to go to for a healthy little snack before lunchtime. Corporate snack box retailers like SnackNation offer the perfect product for these in-office snack stations. Low-carb and low-sugar offerings that keep everyone sustained and reduce distractions that come with feeling hungry.
Don’t Forget a Good Night’s Sleep
Since sleep is one of the most important aspects of life, it’s, of course, going to be a massive contributing factor to how productive you can be at work. Forgetting to get a good night’s sleep won’t only make you sluggish the next day, but it will also reduce your chances of recovering from a hard days work. Ultimately, this will push you into a snowball of stress and unproductiveness.
A great sleep schedule is imperative to ensure you’re productive at work. Take the time in the evenings to practice breathing and also cut out any and all sugary or caffeinated drinks. You want your sleep to be deep and refreshing – not filled with tosses and turns.
If you’re someone who has trouble sleeping because of breathing issues or sleep apnea, then you’ll definitely want to invest in a CPAP machine to give you the good night’s sleep you deserve. Machines like the ResMed AirMini P10 are fantastic as they’re small, affordable and also work just as well as larger more bulky and loud machines.
Prevent Repetitive Workloads
If you’re a team manager, you likely oversee and control who gets what task load. Use this power to reduce workplace monotony and rotate workloads to different team members. No one likes to do the same task every single day with little to no variation. It becomes tedious and also greatly impacts productivity and motivation. The opposite of what you want in the workplace.
If everyone in the workplace boasts a similar skill set, then it would be wise to split up tasks and share the amongst all team members. This way everyone is working together to complete tasks, and there isn’t one single employee stuck doing the same thing every day. It’s also a great idea to be communicative and vocal with the team and ask whether anyone feels as though their workloads are becoming repetitive and tedious to complete at a high quality. Intelligent automation may also be a possibility for some tasks.
Create a Better To-do List
All too often we use our to-do lists to mark down just about everything we need to do during the day, which sometimes goes above and beyond just work tasks. If you’ve found that you’re ‘stuffing’ your to-do list with far too many items, then you’ll be making yourself stressed, less efficient and more likely to quit while you’re ahead.
Something you should begin doing when you create your to-do list is crossing things off as you write them. Take a few moments to list everything you want to achieve during the day and then cross of the unimportant or totally pointless ones. Try to max out your daily to-do list with three to five items because you’re not going to want to look down at it only to see you 15 items left to go.
