25 Bad Habits That Kill Your Productivity
Offered by: Practical Psychology
1. Checking Emails Constantly
Checking your Emails can seem like something that you need to do right as they come in. Why would you want to leave someone waiting for a response? What if I told you that checking your Email constantly was killing your productivity? When you take the time to check your Email you stray away from the task at hand and ultimately losing focus. It takes very valuable cognitive resources to change tasks, which eventually lowers your overall efficiency.
A great way to counteract this is to start setting specific times that you check your Emails. An example time frame could be once in the morning at 9am and once in the afternoon at 3pm, these times can be whatever works best for you. Just remember that these two times are the only moments you can spend checking emails. If someone has an absolute emergency you can put in your email response that you have a direct line that they can reach you at if it’s an actual emergency.
While it may seem like a great idea to be focusing on multiple tasks at first, everyone loves to feel like they are getting a lot of things completed. The thing about multitasking is as much as everyone wants to do it, it starts to kill your productivity. This is because when you switch your focus from one project to another time after time you are taking concentration from your brain and diverting it. Just like moving from one house to another house, you spend a TON of time moving the things, your brain essentially spend a lot of time trying to change your focus.
Once you start working on a project try and keep working on it until you are finished, you can take breaks occasionally if needed, but do not quit until completion. Doing this will help your brain zero-in and focus fully on what you are working on. By doing this you will be able to complete the project with greater precision and then you will be able to move onto the next project. Don’t be a flashlight… Be a laser!
Being a perfectionist is probably one of the most important habits to work on. Yes it is important to try your hardest and put your best effort towards your work, but you do not need to be perfect. Just remember, “Your 80% is someone’s 100%”. Because those little extra efforts that take hours might not matter to your audience. Using the 80/20 rule, if it takes an hour to get to 80%, it’ll take 4 hours to get to 100%. You shouldn’t stop at 80% on everything, for example… I want my car brakes to work 100% of the time, but with most work you can stop when you’re around 80%. You painting a picture of me 80% to perfection will be 100% perfection to me because I’m not going to see the tiny flaws. When you start to feel yourself getting stressed out by trying to make something perfect go ahead and stop and take a break.
4. Saying Yes All The Time
Saying yes to every request you get might feel like a great thing, because why would you want to tell someone no and possibly let your peers down? But think of it like this, you are saying yes to every request that is coming your way and you are getting exhausted. The next person that comes to you and asks you for help, but you know that you are exhausted and have a full schedule. Though it might feel rude to tell someone no, if it is out of your capabilities and you know you cannot put your best work into it. Just kindly tell them that you are not able to do it because you would not be able to give them your best work. They will respect you more in the end.
Being able to make decisions is a big factor in our ability to be more productive. When we spend more time trying to decide if we want to give that task a try or not, we end up wasting time and move the completion of the task farther and farther back.
The best way to fight indecisiveness is to talk with a friend about the decision,so you can clear your thoughts. Sometimes just telling someone about a big decision helps you think of the pros and cons. Another tips is to set a time frame for it to be completed. When you set a deadline for a task, you have no time to question if it is a good idea or not… you just get it done.
Checking Social Media throughout the day is an instant productivity killer. Similar to checking your Email, the same concept applies to Social Media. When you are constantly diverting your focus to social media you are taking your focus and productivity away from the tasks that need completed and giving it to something that really doesn’t need your attention. If you want to increase your productivity you need to limit yourself to social media to certain times during the day just like Emails.
7. Scheduling Important Tasks For Last
There have been countless studies that show that humans only have so much willpower we can exert each day. This is why we need to learn how to prioritize our most important tasks for the beginning of the day. When we set them at the beginning of the day we can put all of our focus and creative energy into them. There’s a whole book written after the little quote “Eat that frog”, meaning if you have to eat a frog, you should eat it first thing in the morning to get it over with.
Think of it like this, you need to complete a paper, but you decide to put it off to the end of the day. Would you want to work on it around 9PM after a full dinner meal, especially if you had an exhausting day? No, this is why we need to prioritize our most important tasks in the beginning of the day. Our willpower is the greatest in the morning.
8. Hitting The Snooze Button
Imagine this, you want to wake up at 7am. Your alarm goes off but you decide to silence it and sleep in a little longer. I’ve definitely had issues with this in the past. Now you have officially lost your first battle, you have already told your brain that you’re going to give up early. When you go to complete your other tasks, you will not feel motivated to put your best work forward or do the most you can because you’ve already primed your brain to give up early.
Next time the alarm button goes off, think about it as winning the day vs losing the day, which one will you choose?
Many people think that if they cram their days with loads of tasks, then they will be able to squeeze the most amount of every bit of time they have. While it is very good to be ambitious with our todo list, it is very bad to over plan your day.
See, you never know what will come up in your schedule so you really do not know if you can actually complete everything. It is best to plan for around 6-7 hours of constant workflow and productivity. This is so you have room to be flexible while getting all your prioritized tasks complete. I suggest having 3-5 main projects during the day and focusing on these major goals. Don’t make them easy like doing laundry, but make them something that contributes to your monthly goals like reading, practicing your craft, or working on a side hustle.
Now let’s look at the opposite spectrum. This is where you start under planning, you have hardly any goals you have set for yourself to complete during that day. When you underplan you leave yourself to putting things off at a later task. If you could earn $100,000 why would you settle for $60,000? If you could live to the age of 87, why would you choose to die at 56? Live your life to the max because you only have one!
If you schedule 6-7 hours worth of meaningful tasks you can get everything completed that day and then you will not have to push it to the next day.
11. Having Too Much Information
Have you had at a time where you had so much information coming in that you were more confused than if you just had been told the basics? This can apply to any part of your life. This is becoming a trend and it is ultimately killing our productivity.
We usually think that the more information we have the easier a project or decision would be, but this might not be the case. When we are overloaded with information our brains start to “Short Circuit” and we start becoming stressed out and do not know how to handle all of it. There’s so much information out on the internet that if you look long enough, you’ll start to see contradictory ideas and facts, so use the information you have and execute. Over time and through experimenting, you’ll find what the truth is, what works, and what you can double down on.
12. Keeping toxic friends
Toxic friends also include toxic family. Having people in your life that constantly drain your energy and pull you away from your goals are sometimes difficult to get rid of, but needed. My best advice on this tip is to either have a conversation with your friend or stubborn family member and tell them how their habits or negativity are bringing you down and offer ways to help them change, or slowly fade away from them.
13. Inconsistent Sleep Schedule
Having an inconsistent sleep schedule is one of the best ways to kill your productivity. When you are constantly switching the time you’re falling asleep and waking up you’re not letting your body get into a habit. This is especially bad because you won’t know how to handle your days, maybe you are tired one day and awake the next. Your energy cycles will change day to day and you won’t truly know what you can accomplish each day.
Once you start adding consistency to your sleep schedule, you will better be able to train your body to know when to work hard and when to rest.
14. Non Dedicated Work Space
Do you work anywhere you feel like? Maybe one day you choose the sofa or the next day its your back deck? When you have a dedicated workspace you are better able to focus on your tasks at hand and be the most productive you possible.
It is known that you need to seperate your sleeping space and your work space in order to increase productivity. This is because our brains to start to recognize the constant locations we are in and remember what we do there. To better start counteracting this phenomenon, you can set up a little desk in another room or even go to your public library. Just try and separate the places where you rest and work.
Have you noticed that when you want to do something sometimes you have this little voice telling you that it’s a bad idea? Well, that is a little self doubting voice, it’s there to tell you to give up on things that your brain might fear will hurt you… AKA failure.
When you start to notice that you are hearing this voice, try and remember why you were wanting to do it. Think of all the reasons this process will help you grow or whatever the reason you are trying to complete it.
We think that the more we work and the more we push our limits the more we can get done. This is especially common in the businesses ecosphere, we want to show our boss that we can do any task they put us too, or show the world we really can do what we want. While that is great and all… we need to know our limits and when we are about to over work ourselves.
What a lot of people forget is that the brain grows when we rest, so it is completely necessary to take breaks and vacations. This is the time our brain will be able to rebuild itself and cultivate even more productivity for when we come back to crush it.
Just like not having a consistent sleep routine, not have a general routine is just as bad. Some of the highest earners live by their simple daily routines. When you have a routine throughout the day, you can better control how your day starts. When you control how your day starts, you can get even more done because you feel great. Consistency is key.
Another great thing about having a routine is we limit our amount of choices in the morning, so we can reserve those decisions for our creative work. Don’t make the decision to go on a morning run, be like the Nike slogan and just do it.
18. Not Drinking Enough Water
Studies have shown that just a 1% dehydration loss can lead up to a 12% loss in productivity. This is a lot if you are trying to maximize your productivity during the day. The reason water is so important to us… is not because our body is 60%, but because when we start becoming dehydrated, we start to experience symptoms that can kill our productivity. These symptoms can be: dizziness, mental fatigue, problems with information processing, and a whole slew of others.
One of the best practices to make sure this doesn’t happen is to carry a water bottle around with you and always be filling it up. This will make sure that you are hydrated and focused.
19. Quitting on the uncomfortable things
One of the biggest killers of your productivity is quitting on the things that make you uncomfortable. These items that you want to do, but feel impossible, are from that little voice in your head.
When you notice that you are about to quit stop for a moment and just countdown from 5. This is great because it tells your brain that you want to do it and you will better be able to make a decision. Neuroscience shows that we can look at people’s brains and tell right when they are about to give up on a physical task. We can use this information to tell someone “You’re about to give up, try lasting a minute longer”, and they will push past the point they would have originally given up.
20. Impulsive Web Browsing
Another big factor in being as productive as possible is to limit our impulsive web browsing. This is when you go to search for a topic or answer to a question and somehow you end up spending 3 hours researching it compared to the 30 minutes it should have taken.
A better way to beat this is to write down what you are wanting to research and look it up later. This will still let you complete that task but after you finish all your prioritized items.
One of the worst times to try and be productive is when we feel like we have all these different things stacked on our shoulders. We can feel that the world is almost falling at our feet, if you want to be more productive with your time you need to start managing this stress in a healthy way.
A great way to deal with stress in your life is to sign up to your local gym. This is not only a great way to battle your stress, but also build your body up to a healthier profile. Another tip is to find a friend that you trust and talk with them. Sometimes just letting out your worries into the world will lift the weight off of your shoulders. Most of the time your fears are irrational.
The amount of ways that our bodies and minds connect is mind-blowing. This is why skipping your morning breakfast could immediately lead you to sabotaging your productivity. The reason breakfast can become an important part of your day is because when you eat breakfast it helps jumpstart your metabolism levels and replenishes your blood sugar. If you start your morning without breakfast you have the possibility of feeling sluggish and tired. Some people also believe in intermittent fasting, which works very well for me. I don’t eat for 4-6 hours after I wake up and it really helps my productivity. With my experience, on meals you should experiment on yourself in a safe way - try intermittent fasting for a week and see if it works for you!
23. Responding to Messages as They Come In
When you are working and you start receiving text messages from whoever, you think that you are obligated to answer them right as they come in. But this is not the case, just like checking your Emails when you divert your focus from your task and bring it to a message you are destroying your productivity efficiency. The people can call you if they think it is an absolute emergency. You will notice that a lot of things actually are not emergencies, and people will start respecting your time.
24. Not Automating Process
Yes, it is great to feel like you are in control and doing everything yourself. But what if I told you that you could get more done by automating some of your tasks? You would have to give some of your power away, but ultimately you would being more productive. It’s called leverage.
There are tons of things that you can automate in your day… there are even special websites that offer virtual assistants who can help you answer phone calls, answer emails, etc. Anything that you might need done. Now with that extra time without doing tedious, boring tasks… you can worry about the tasks that really need your focus and are in your specialty area.
25. Comparing yourself to others
The last killer of our productivity is our constant obsession with comparing ourselves to others. The reason this is such an issue is because we compare ourselves to people who are not in the same situation as us or is not in the same place we are.
We constantly think we need to be doing something someone else is doing when ultimately we all have different skill sets that make us productive and 110% ourselves. Next time you feel like you are comparing yourself just take a moment and think that you are building your own life and building yourself up and not someone else. Just have some faith in yourself.
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