7 Inspiring Ideas for Improving Productivity In Your Working Life

June 12th 2016 | Posted by phil scott

7 Inspiring Ideas for Improving Productivity In Your Working Life

Today’s modern working life is challenging.  There are responsibilities to balance, relationships to build and daily tasks to complete.  We can often find ourselves struggling to be as productive as we want to be.

Take a look at Executive Recruit’s 7 Inspiring Ideas and see how you can improve your productivity!

1) Divide & conquer

Break your day into segments.  Viewing your working day as an open-ended 8-hour stretch could easily give the impression of having all the time in the world and you could find yourself being less productive as a result.

Dividing your day into segments and assigning each a particular project may give a shorter time period for completion but can actually help you achieve more!  Giving yourself a set time period can help focus your mind and push you to complete the task.

2) Break for refreshment

It is impossible to be productive for every minute of the working day.  Your brain and body need short rest periods to refresh.

Rather than avoiding taking a break and risking reaching the point of exhaustion (which will in the long run make you less productive), schedule in short breaks throughout the day.  Not only will you feel the benefit of downtime, but you’ll also feel confident knowing it is helping your productivity!

3) Improve your email management

Checking email is one of those work tasks that can easily while away too much time.  Whilst it is crucial to keep communication open, too frequent checking of your inbox can have a detrimental impact on productivity.

It might be hard at first to resist the buzz of instant reading.  But remember, moving away from your current task to read and respond to emails hinders your productivity.  When you stop what you are doing to reply to an email you waste time getting your brain in gear with the new email task and then again when you revert back to your first activity.

How to improve your email management?  Simple!  Set aside a small number of times throughout the day to check your emails.  Prioritise those that need a quick response and schedule those that require more in-depth thought for your next available slot.

4) Write a To-Do list

Firstly, writing down all the tasks that need to be achieved means that nothing will be forgotten.  As a new project comes in, you can simply add it to your on-going schedule.

But what is so great about writing a To-Do list and how it helps productivity, is the satisfaction that can be achieved by crossing off a task!

The visual representation of completing the challenge you’ve set yourself is a great motivational tool.  As you focus and concentrate to complete a task, you will work much more productively.

5) Prioritise your tasks

Make the most of your to-do lists by prioritising activities in terms of importance.

Balancing the urgency of the task and its level of importance with the time needed to complete it will give you a rating of where to schedule & prioritise the task.  Work through tasks in priority order and you should find yourself increasing your productivity, ticking off those assignments and easily completing the more important work first.

6) Consider your location

When working in an office, especially one that is open plan, you leave yourself open to distractions.  If working on a task that requires in-depth concentration, think about changing your location to give you a workspace free from distraction.  That could be working from home for certain projects or even making simple changes, such as making the most of a quiet meeting room.

Even on a day-to-day basis, improving (if logistics allow) the location of your desk could make a real impact on your productivity.  If you’re unlucky enough to be at the desk nearest to the kitchen for example, you might find yourself losing valuable time when co-workers stop to chat to you as they walk past.

Think about what you need from your working environment to be your most productive and see if you can achieve this in your office.

7) Make the most of meetings

Meetings are a fundamental part of office life, but there are the good meetings and the bad meetings – you will no doubt have experienced both!

View meetings as a way to discuss important projects with key people, create an action plan and take away a list of tasks to deliver to drive the project forward.

Long, open-ended discussions or conversations that stray from the agenda are simply hampering your productivity.  Avoid wasting time this way by helping to keep the meeting on the straight and narrow!  Help avoid those straying conversations and keep the meeting focused, efficient and productive.

So, improving your productivity at work can be achieved in a number of ways.  Just implementing a few small changes to your behaviour and routine can have a tangible, positive impact to your working day.