Stumbling blocks on road to productivity Bad habits prevent progress at work
Nothing sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits. They are insidious, creeping up on you so you don’t even notice the damage they’re causing.
Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative and stifle your job performance. Getting control of your bad habits is critical, and not just for productivity’s sake. A University of Minnesota study found that people who exercise a high degree of self-control tend to be much happier than those who don’t, both in the moment and in the long run.
Some bad habits cause more trouble than others, and the nine that follow are among the worst offenders. Shedding these habits will increase your productivity and allow you to enjoy the positive mood that comes with increased self-control.
1. Checking out the internet
It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would be. When you click out of your work because you get an itch to check the news, Facebook, Instagram, etc., this pulls you out of flow.
Click in and out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow.
2. Perfectionism
Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming characters and plot, and they even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in a book. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don’t get started and give your ideas time to evolve?
Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of being imperfect: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”
3. Meetings
Meetings gobble up your precious time like nothing else. Ultra-productive people avoid meetings as much as possible. They know that a meeting will drag on forever if they let it, so when they must have a meeting, they inform everyone at the onset that they’ll stick to the intended schedule.
This sets a clear limit that motivates everyone to be more focused and efficient.
4. Responding to e-mails as they arrive
Productive people don’t allow their e-mail to be a constant interruption. In addition to checking their e-mail on a schedule, they take advantage of features that prioritize messages by sender. They set alerts for their most important vendors and their best customers, and they save the rest until they reach a stopping point in their work. Some people even set up an auto-responder that lets senders know when they’ll be checking their e-mail again.
5. Hitting the snooze button
When you sleep, your brain moves through an elaborate series of cycles, the last of which prepares you to be alert at your wake-up time. This is why you’ll sometimes wake up right before your alarm clock goes off. When you hit the snooze button and fall back asleep, you lose this alertness and wake up later, often feeling groggy.
So no matter how tired you think you are when your alarm clock goes off, force yourself out of bed if you want to have a productive morning.
6. Multitasking
Multitasking is a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.
When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.
7. Putting off tough tasks
We have a limited amount of mental energy, and as we exhaust this energy, our decision-making and productivity decline rapidly. This is called decision fatigue.
When you put off tough tasks until late in the day because they’re intimidating, you save them for when you’re at your worst.
To beat decision fatigue, you must tackle complex tasks in the morning, when your mind is fresh.
8. Using your phone, tablet or computer in bed
Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains high concentrations of this blue light.
When your eyes are exposed to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert.
By the evening, your brain doesn’t expect any blue light exposure and is very sensitive to it. Many devices emit shortwavelength blue light, and in the case of your laptop, tablet and phone, they do so brightly and right in your face.
This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall asleep and with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off. And a poor night’s sleep has disastrous effects on productivity.
Turn off these devices at least an hour before bedtime.
9. Eating too much sugar
Glucose functions as the gas pedal for energy in the brain. You need glucose to concentrate on challenging tasks. With too little glucose, you feel tired, unfocused and slow; too much glucose leaves you jittery and unable to concentrate.
Research has shown that the sweet spot is about 25 grams of glucose. The tricky thing is that you can get these 25 grams of glucose any way you want, and you’ll feel the same, at least initially. The difference lies in how long the productivity lasts.
Donuts, soda and other forms of refined sugar lead to an energy boost that lasts a mere 20 minutes, while oatmeal, brown rice and other foods containing complex carbohydrates release their energy slowly, which enables you to sustain your focus.
Travis Bradberry is the co-author of “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” and co-founder of TalentSmart, a provider of emotional intelligence tests and training.