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Home » Blog » Productivity Hacks: 7 Ways To Be More Productive At Work

What’s holding you back from being more productive at work? Do you squander your energy on busy work that you enjoy? Or has the same problem been knocking on your door each morning? 

You probably have a long list of things to do but not enough time to get them all done. Maybe you convince yourself to just get it done, skipping lunch and working longer hours. Maybe you just throw your hands in the air, admit that you can’t do it all, and start putting out the biggest fires or greasing the loudest wheels. And yet, you are aware of how satisfying it is to work diligently, finishing off those meaty projects that have been piling up for a long time in addition to tackling challenging and time-consuming undertakings. 

You may have made real progress on your work. When your day didn’t run you, but rather you ran your day. You need to figure out what works for you in terms of your preferences, strengths, and the tasks you need to complete in order to have more of those days more frequently. This manual will make you more effective whether you’re the CEO or an assistant, have 50 years of experience in the workforce, or are just starting out. We will provide you with some productivity hacks and break some productivity myths on the way that will help you be more productive at work.

Getting Started With The Definition of Productivity

It’s time to make the donuts. Do you recall this Dunkin’ Donuts advertising campaign? It served as a sort of rallying call for me and my brother! I believe they should still be running those advertisements, but those times are over because we are now meant to be “runnin’ on Dunkin’.” Nevertheless, I have worked for companies that seem appropriate given that it dates all the way back to the motivation I had as a youngster. 

I’ll admit that when It’s time to make the donuts commercials initially aired, I thought this is what productivity is in its true essence. I thought that this was the definition of productivity. But later in life, I learned that hard labour wasn’t hard work when I saw that mustachioed man, Fred the Baker, getting up at some absurdly early hour and making his way to the doughnut shop to start his day. (Ad)

Because you have no choice but to get out of bed and complete a task when it needs to be done is not being productive. Although it would seem obvious, productivity isn’t putting us with those absurd hours just to keep the flame high. 

So what is productivity then? As defined by many economists, the amount of work that your workers can generate over a specific time period is referred to as workplace productivity. In other terms, it compares the total input to the whole output (goods and services) (labor and costs). But in true essence, the definition of productivity at work is the assessment of the efficiency of the employees.

Productivity at work is not what Fred the Baker shows rather it is quite the opposite. It is being at the best performance while being in your working hours to produce the maximum best result.

Productivity Hacks: How To Be More Productive At Work?

Are you prepared to hear good news? 

Eighty-six billion of the world’s most effective transistors are nestled inside your skull, only centimeters from your eyes. No computer ever created comes close to matching the incredible powers of this neural network, which is you and is running the operating system we know as life. 

Your brain can hold about eight thousand iPhones’ worth of data since it was created over millions and millions of years of life on Earth. An immensely intricate, invisible symphony of neural processes underlies everything you are, do, feel, love, care about, long for, and aspire to.

Now for the bad news is that the modern world is like The Hunger Games, and your brain is a willing participant being constantly and mercilessly pursued from all directions. Our tremendous birthright is being undermined by the way we live today, along with our ability to think clearly and our vulnerability to the amount of work we take up for ourselves.

Even though you may think we have a myriad amount of time, we also have a myriad amount of work that is constantly in need of our attention. So our fabulous brain always keeps struggling to make all ends meet and in the process causes our productivity at work to sink. Because guess what, we need to make our ends meet before we actually produce a better quality of work. This is why we have come up with a few productivity hacks that you can use in your everyday life to make sure you achieve the best productivity at work that you need for yourself.

Make Time for Work That Really Matters

Wish there were more hours in the day. How often have you heard yourself saying this? Everyone wants it, but it’s not something you can get. But what if you could free up a sizable amount of time—possibly as much as 20% of your workday—to concentrate on the tasks that really matter?

By being aware of how they spend their time, choosing the duties that are most important to you and your organization, and eliminating or creatively outsourcing the rest, you can make them more productive. 

The traditional Start/Stop/Continue exercise can assist you in adjusting your daily work routine in modest but meaningful ways. Choose between dropping, delegating, and redesigning

Sort the low-value jobs into three categories: off-load opportunities (tasks that can be delegated with little effort), quick kills (things you can quit performing right now without having an impact), and long-term redesign (work that needs to be restructured or overhauled).

You May Hate Planning, but You Should Do It Anyway

When you plan, you’ll learn the hard truths about what it will take to finish a project or just get this week’s job done. Because you are no longer in the lovely, fantastical world where time is endless and you can accomplish everything at once while making everyone happy, you might feel a little uneasy. 

However, learning about these realities as soon as possible offers you the advantage of being able to immediately negotiate deliverable expectations or enlist more resources for a project. Start planning ahead of time. Know what you have to do and plan it out. You will see a great difference. You will become more confident and will be able to set boundaries and choose your daily activities since you are aware of all of your options and the top priorities. By doing this, you may regularly satisfy expectations while maximising your effectiveness.

Train Your Brain to Focus

Take a moment to scan the room the next time you’re in a meeting. It’s likely that you will observe your coworkers texting or sending emails when someone is speaking or presenting. Many of us take great pride in our ability to multitask and treat it as a badge of honour. But ask yourself, is it?

It might enable us to cross off more items from our to-do lists. However, it also decreases our capacity for working memory retention, which hinders problem solving and creativity. It also increases our propensity to make errors, overlook crucial cues, and make blunders.

You’ll learn some unflinching realities about what it takes to complete a project or simply get your work done when you start to focus.

Make sure you take on one task at a time, (as I said already, multitasking is making errors) and focus on it completely. This will maximising your effectiveness and help you achieve your task faster.

Use The Power of Time Management

How many times have you been asked to manage your time better? I’m sure as I speak from experience, the number must be huge. Your ability to manage your time effectively can have a big impact on how productive you are at work, and how efficiently you work. Time management can actually help you plan in such a manner that will create a time span for all your tasks.

The Pomodoro method is one tactic you could find useful. The Pomodoro approach uses a timer and is similar to scheduled breaks in that you commit to a job for 20 minutes (though you can extend this to 30 minutes), work on it until the timer goes off, and then take a five-minute break. This method can be efficient because it gives you more uninterrupted time for focused work and a way to take a short break from the task before finishing it.

Allow yourself to understand the concept of time management and make sure that you take out time for all the tasks and spare some for yourself too.

Motivate Yourself And Beat The Procrastination

Our minds are wired to procrastinate, which is a problem. We all generally find it difficult to complete jobs that offer potential rewards for our current efforts in the future. That’s because our brains handle concrete information more easily than abstract information, and the current inconvenience is extremely real in comparison to those unknown, uncertain future rewards. 

But how do you stop being so narrow-minded about your difficult tasks? Rebalancing the cost-benefit analysis is key: Make the expenses of taking action feel lower and the benefits of taking action feel greater. The benefit of completing tedious work must feel greater than the discomfort of beginning it. Motivate yourself to work through it and take yourself out of this procrastination trap.

Get The Work Done on the Road

I know this may seem weird but trust me we waste a lot of time while travelling. Before the pandemic and even now, after when things are coming back, offices have opened their gates and are welcoming their employees back to work in full action. This allowed us to have more of The On Road Time that I call. 

Usually, we either, watch the next episode on Netflix because shutting our brain seems easier, or we just hog onto taking a nap and even some of us use this time to catch up with our old buddies. Well, there’s something better you can do. You can actually get your work done on the road. Make appointments with yourself, check in what’s missing, and actually spend the time with the satisfaction of getting a block of work finished. Sit back in your seat relaxed, and take in the joy of having completed something difficult. Taking a moment like this creates new neural connections that associate productivity at work with pleasure rather than resentment.

Going on Vacation Doesn’t Have to Kill Your Productivity

Vacations are the things that dreams and cruise commercials are made of. But some of us fear vacation because we either feel that while we will be in the Bahamas, taking a skinny dipping we will be wasting a lot of our time. The other half of us think that vacation will distract us and we will come back with gloom to not work. But it’s ideal to return feeling renewed, energised, and prepared to work. 

However, there are occasions when we worry solely about taking a vacation. Don’t do it; in fact, refrain from obsessing over completing all tasks before a vacation. Convince yourself that the world can function without you at that period in order to be able to actually take a vacation. By planning ahead, changing your perspective, and minimising your involvement with what is happening at work, you may make the most of your time off and expect to be completely revived when you return.

Bursting The Productivity Bubble

Productivity has many faces. And at the same time, it has many myths. Different people have different opinions, all claiming different aspects of productivity. Like reorganising your desk, keeping it neat, having a small slapping near you, and taking coffee breaks. All these may seem that it may help in increasing our productivity at work but the truth is quite the opposite. A plant will not increase your productivity, organising your desk will in no way help you to gain efficiency. What may actually help is all that I have already described in the first section. But living with the myths in hopes of increasing your productivity is poisonous itself. So, together, let’s burst those productivity bubbles and actually live up to what is needed of us.

Bubble One ←

The first is that we should broaden the scope of our efforts by pursuing numerous obligations and possibilities. We think that increasing the number of things we take on will increase our productivity and performance. As we will see, “doing more” is frequently a bad idea. It will never let you concentrate on one task and indeed lead to creating more errors.

Bubble Two ←

The second fallacy has to do with the concept of focus. It’s a common misconception that choosing a few things to focus on and saying no to others is the only way for someone to achieve their best. This perspective is inadequate. It puts too much emphasis on choice as if it were the sole precondition: If you have the self-control to pick a few priorities, you will succeed. Choosing a few priorities is just one part of the solution. The other quarter is the harsh obligation that you must obsess over your selected area of focus to thrive.

Bubble Three ←

The complexity trap is another myth that wreaks havoc inside companies. Goals, priorities, tasks, measurements, checkpoints, team members, and other elements are piled on in the name of progress. However, including these things makes the system more complex, which we can quantify in terms of the number of things and the connections between them. It should come as no surprise that, according to a whopping 65 percent of participants in our poll, their organisation is “extremely complex—many departments, regulations, processes, and strategies that require collaboration.”

Our excel doesn’t require any extra assigned tasks to be added. There is a better approach to work, one that shields us from the complexity and spread-too-thin dangers. We can perform at our peak if we choose just a few things and get obsessed with excelling in those.

Bubble Four ←

The idea that “more hours equals more work” is irrational. Long hours of working result in decreased performance, disgruntled employees, and lower productivity. Our attention tends to wane after a while of working, even if some of us can maintain our focus for longer than others due to the diverse ways that our brains are wired.

Bubble Five ←

It might frequently appear that those who set the most ambitious objectives are the most successful when speaking in the language of self-improvement, which emphasises climbing the tallest mountain and living your greatest life. However, if you establish goals, such as registering for a half-marathon to encourage you to exercise more or releasing a book to encourage you to write, you risk overwhelming yourself and having a negative effect. Long-term, it can make you perceive the action—running, writing, etc.—as being excessively difficult.

Tapping Into Your Productivity Ninja

Practicing Zen-Like Calmness 

The capacity to carve out time and space to reflect logically and wisely on the matter at hand is the key to making excellent decisions. A productivity ninja knows how to handle this and has control over his tasks. The Ninja is aware of this and maintains his composure in the face of difficulty and information overload.

Facing The Battle With Ruthlessness

Adopting a Zen-like calmness while remaining ruthless is not contradictory. Your ninja ruthlessness is needed while analysing information to separate the wheat from the chaff, identify the timber from the trees, and identify the large opportunities from the even bigger ones. Ruthlessness, however, involves more than simply how we absorb information; it also involves how we manage our time and attention, concentrating primarily on the tasks that have the biggest impact, even at the expense of other tasks that are “worth completing.”

Choose Your Weapon Mindfully

There are many resources available to assist us to stay on top of our game. The Productivity Ninja needs to stockpile two main categories of equipment: The organising tools and The thinking tools. The secret to success is knowing what to use and when, as well as understanding each tool’s capabilities. Your tools must instill trust in you and make sure that you are rarely distracted by your own incompetence when using them effectively.

Fight Like A Ninja, Not A Superhero

We’re just Productivity Ninjas trying our best; we’re not superheroes. And when we are struggling with doubts about our competence and attempts to persuade ourselves that things aren’t worth the trouble and we should give up what we’re doing in favour of a quieter or easier life, we can just choose to concentrate on our numerous and varied successes instead, and – get this – just stop beating ourselves up so much.

We are only human, and the ones who constantly demand perfection are the insane ones, not us. But more significantly, the mishaps and flaws just serve to highlight how magical it can be when things go according to plan and serve as a reminder to never assume that they always will. All that magic? All those wonderful things we brought about? All that vigour, momentum, and prodigious output? It only seemed that way; it wasn’t magic at all. Because of superhuman. Ninja skills rather than superhuman special abilities, everything was actually pretty simple.

So, what are you waiting for? Gear up, wear your armor. Switch your strategies. It’s time to adorn your ninja skills and get them to use. You don’t need to fly high and jump on buildings (you don’t need to be superman or spiderman). Rather just be a productivity ninja and use your productivity ninja technique and step into the battle to win it. You will Succeed. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the definition of productivity?

The amount of work that your employees can do over a certain time period is referred to as workplace productivity, according to several economists. To put it another way, it contrasts the entire input with the entire output (goods and services) (labor and costs). However, the evaluation of an employee’s effectiveness is the definition of productivity in its truest sense.

How does time management increase productivity at work?

How productive and efficient you are at work can be significantly impacted by your capacity for time management. In fact, time management may assist you in making plans that provide a timeline for all of your work.

What is a popular productivity myth?

The first is that by seeking a variety of responsibilities and opportunities, we should extend the scope of our activities. We believe that taking on more responsibilities will boost our performance and productivity. We’ll find that “doing more” is often a mistake. It will prevent you from focusing on a single activity and, in fact, cause you to make more mistakes.

How to be more productive at work?

  • Make Time for Work That Really Matters
  • You May Hate Planning, but You Should Do It Anyway
  • Train Your Brain to Focus
  • Use The Power of Time Management
  • Motivate Yourself And Beat The Procrastination
  • Get The Work Done on the Road

How can we tap into our productivity ninja?

  • Practicing Zen-Like Calmness 
  • Facing The Battle With Ruthlessness
  • Choose Your Weapon Mindfully
  • Fight Like A Ninja, Not A Superhero