How to Achieve Simple Productivity
COVID-19 has us restructuring our daily lives and trying to meddle through a workday, whether we work at home or go to work. With all our daily restructuring, it is easy to lose the productivity that we have become accustomed to during our day. How can we achieve simple productivity while trying to accommodate our new struggles and lifestyles?
The first thing to keep in mind when you are reaching for new productivity levels is to give yourself some kindness while adjusting to your new schedule and testing different avenues of productivity. The second is that everyone takes some time to adjust and that new habits will not come automatically. Depending on your personality, it could take anywhere between 30-90 days to develop a good practice.
Multitasking
The idea of multitasking is a myth. We, as humans, are terrible multitaskers. We can train ourselves in how fast we can switch from one topic or task to another. However, what usually eats up our time during the day are unexpected tasks, which could come in the form of emails, notifications, or a co-worker stopping by your office. These tasks, while they increase communication on some levels, they also drive our focus away from our priorities. As assignments, emails, and other notifications come in, take a few seconds to ask if this task will get you closer to your goals or if it is actually urgent.
Schedule Regular Breaks
While scheduling regular breaks might seem like it is not productive, allowing your brain a small rest will give you the focus you need to organize your thoughts. When you take time to step away from your desk, it affords you the time to stretch, re-energize, and gain focus. Recent studies have stated that for the most productive work habits, break up each hour to work for 52 minutes and break for 17 minutes. The small 17-minute break isn’t a time to check Facebook or get distracted by emails; it is a time to separate yourself from your work completely.
Consolidate Your Number of Notifications
We all get distracted by the number of notifications on our phones or our computers. Those apps that you would deem as not productive take the time to shut off their notifications; this includes phone games and news alerts. It might be a good idea to consolidate the number of places where you check notifications; as an example, you could put all the apps you look at regularly in the same folder on your phone, saving time scrolling through all your apps.
Schedule Time to Organize Your Day
Either start each day or end each day with time to organize your thoughts and prioritize your tasks. Having some quiet time to think about your goals and the next steps towards reaching your goal gives you time to create a designated list of actions or tasks. When you have a set list of prioritized tasks, you can easily make micro-decisions that allow you to focus on those priorities because you are more productive towards big projects or an overall goal.
