Productivity is one of those areas that everybody has to focus on, but it seems to be a difficult thing to get just right. But rather than looking at ways to make things more productive, perhaps we should look at the challenges. So what are these, in life, in work, and in general?
The Wrong Tools
While it’s unfair to say that you should blame your tools for insufficient productivity, the wrong tools can have a significant impact on your ability to work well. These days, we are more reliable than ever on our computers, which means that if we are to work effectively, we’ve got to have some knowledge to overcome those little issues, whether this is a problem with the “black screen of death,” or knowing how to clear your cache and cookies. On the subject of the latter, you can read this to learn how to clear your cache. Productivity means having the right tools at your disposal.
Multitasking
There are many studies that show multitasking doesn’t work. However, people think that they’re getting more done by multitasking, it may feel more productive, but it is far more effective to concentrate on one thing at a time. You have to recognize that when you are trying to multitask, you are slowing yourself down because of the amount of time it takes to regain that focus to pay attention to your next task. We think that we thrive in a chaotic environment by doing more than one thing at a time, but instead, by prioritizing your list of tasks the difficulty and starting at the hardest one, it gives you a bigger sense of productivity and a bigger sense of achievement.
A Reactive Frame of Mind
In work environments, we can start to be more reactive, but this means that we spend lots of fallow periods not being productive. We need to focus on the important things, like getting a sense of focus to build up our energies and stay level throughout the course of our working day. When you think about common working tasks such as being in your emails all day, this can greatly reduce your productivity, and it becomes a more reactive way to work, and adds to your working day because of the amount of time it takes to answer these queries. If you reduce your time spent on email, you can move other projects forward.
Feeling Overwhelmed by a Goal or Project
Perfectionism may seem to be an ideal habit, but this is not an effective practice in the long run. When we feel inclined to make everything perfect, this can instill more feelings of failure. It is so important to break goals and projects down into individual pieces, this will help you to be more creative rather than being more stop-start with your practice, but also it allows you to solve individual problems that you can make easier. For example, if you have a number of practices that are easily completed by a machine, why don’t you automate them?
It is important that we have to work smart rather than hard, and this is what will help us become more productive. But if we think we have to just incorporate the right tools, we never get to the root of the problem.