It is very common not to be able to be 100% focused because we easily get distracted by secondary tasks.
If this situation happens to you and you are struggling to focus on your work, this blog post is 100% dedicated to you. In order to help you, today we will present you 6 ways to increase your productivity at work and thus stay focused.
Increased productivity in your work may depend on just a few details. Let us now learn in what way.
1- Create a document where you define your tasks and the respective deadlines for each of them – and motivate your co-workers to do the same
By making your own schedule and using it every day, you will be able to stay more organized.
By setting deadlines, you will have an overview of what you need to accomplish and how you can organize your time more efficiently.
Consultants such as Task and Flow working with project management platforms (the well known Asana) can help you with this. Thus, you will have all the support and follow-up you need in terms of the management of the projects in which you are involved.
2– Prioritize your tasks based on their degree of relevance and urgency
We have previously written an article that teaches you in a complete way how you can set your priorities, and for that you can read it here so that you don’t forget any steps.
One of the tools you can create to assign a priority order is the 4-quadrant matrix: on its left side assign the name “important” and “not important” and at the top of the matrix “urgent” and “not urgent”.
Fill it out in its entirety and the tasks you put as “important and urgent” are your real priority!
3- Tell your teammates that meetings should only happen when they are really important and necessary – avoid unnecessary team gatherings
When you participate in an unnecessary meeting, team members are quickly distracted by each other.
When facing useful and relevant meetings, make sure they are short and engaging.
There are alternatives for those meetings that do not take place due to their irrelevance: communication platforms such as Whatsapp and Skype significantly reduce long meetings and interruptions and thus quickly communicate with the team members we need to interact with. We leave you the advice not to prolong these conversations or you will again become distracted.
4- Prioritize the jobs in which you are your strong point
A recent survey found that employees who undertake projects in which they highlight their strengths, are more focused and engaged with it.
Don’t forget that deadlines also play a role in priority but if a certain project is really your strong point, proceed with this one as well.
5- Bundle tasks in order to maximize your productivity and focus
Did you know that, on average, employees are productive for 2 to 3 hours a day? It is too little!
If there are few hours of focus, these should be spent on priority and mandatory tasks as we talked about earlier.
Aggregate the tasks that can complement each other and you will get much more out of it that way – it saves you time.
6- Define your break times
Breaks are very important for increasing productivity – it is often a matter of minutes to “recharge the battery.”
Some say that the ideal is to take 15-minute breaks every 90 minutes at your workplace.
Leave your desk and your keyboard for a few minutes, drink a cup of coffee and check the news on your cell phone.
Lack of breaks has been proven to hurt your work performance so set times to relax a bit and “turn off the switch.”
Now that you know some tips that you can put into practice, follow them and if you need external support, don’t hesitate to contact consultants like Task and Flow that can help you with the management of your projects and tasks.