How many of us get far less done within the average working day than we would really like to?
Probably too many of us if I had to guess.
There are more distractions in our daily lives than there ever have been before and we can find our minds wandering endlessly throughout the day. This might be easy and even fun sometimes, but it isn’t conducive to getting good work done.
Whenever we don’t get enough work done during the workday this is when we find our work spilling out into other areas of our lives and where we find ourselves getting more and more stressed.
It is much better to spend 8 hours a day fully focused and engaged, rather than spending 12 hours a day stressed and chaotic.
With all of that in mind, here is how we think you can best optimise your workday for productivity.
Be realistic with your time estimations
When it comes to drawing up a schedule for our days and weeks at work, the most important thing is making sure that can realistically know how long certain tasks will take and how long we will have in the day to do them.
There is no point in deciding on having an 8-hour workday and scheduling 8 solid hours of tasks that need to be done. This will never work and we will feel awful at the end of it.
We need to estimate our days realistically and take breaks and non-productive times into account.
In an 8-hour day, we probably get 4 hours of deep concentration, 2 of admin, emails, messages and correspondence, and 2 of breaks and unexpected occurrences. That means we can only schedule difficult tasks for 4 hours, not 8.
This isn’t a bad thing if we know how to schedule productively around this. It means that during those 4 hours we know that we need to give our full attention to our tasks because there won’t be 4 more hours later.
It can help us stay focused and productive if we get it right.
Buy noise cancelling headphones
One of the very best things we can do for ourselves during the workday is limit the external distractions we face. This includes phone notifications, email pings, and external noise from other people in the house, neighbours, constructions, dogs, you name it.
Noise-cancelling headphones are a great item to add to your workday outfit. They can really help you to focus on the task at hand and ignore everything else around you.
Trust me, it is an investment you won’t regret making.
Take proper breaks
We might make the mistake of thinking that to be productive we need to work non-stop, but this isn’t true. We are only productive when we are producing work of a proper standard. To do this, we need to be rested, fed and watered.
Taking breaks is the whole way for us to then focus during periods of deep work and concentration.
Productivity is all about balance and healthy living, it isn’t about going past our own boundaries and making ourselves unwell.
Get stuff done but look after yourself too. That is the key.
