It is important that we know what things help us with our work output and our daily tasks, however, it is equally important that we know the things that don’t help us in these ways.
If we know what is holding us back and keeping us from reaching our full potential, then we can actively avoid these things and choose to cut them out of our lives.
It is only when we ditch our unhealthy habits and routines that we can begin to work in a way that is truly effective, and that is where we will see success in our work lives.
If you are falling behind right now and you want to get on to a better pathway, here are some things that could be holding you back. If you work on cutting out these things from your life or at least working on them, you should see a rise in your success at work.
We are the only ones who are truly responsible for our own work, so it has to be us that puts in this effort.
Do you agree?
Unrealistic goals
Goal setting is important, but setting the right goals is even more important.
If we set ourselves lots of goals that are unreachable and unattainable, we will end up more stressed and disorganised than we were, to begin with.
We need to set ourselves reasonable and attainable goals and set ourselves systems of practice to help us achieve these goals.
For example, if we want a promotion at work, our goal can’t be “get a promotion in the next month”, it needs to be something like, “work at a level that will be considered ready for promotion”, and within that our system of practice would be made up of mini-goals such as, “attend every meeting and actively contribute”, “upskill outside of work”, and “read a communication skills book”.
We need an active and reasonable plan, and then we can reach our goals.
Long workdays
Really long work hours might seem like the best way to fit lots of work into a short space of time and therefore produce lots of work, but all it does is stress us out and make us burn out quicker.
We need to set reasonable work hours so that we can be productive in those times and then get ample rest and recreation outside of those times.
Poor personal boundaries
If we have poor personal boundaries, our workload will always suffer.
If we take long breaks during the workday to discuss a friend’s relationship problems, if we do our shopping on a two-hour lunch break, if we take personal calls during work, all of this will add up to a poor performance at work, whether we see it at the time or not.
Having poor boundaries blurs everything in our life together and our work always suffers.
Keep work at work and home at home.
A ruthless attitude
A popular thought out there right now is that you need to be ruthless to survive in the world of work.
You don’t.
You do need to be confident, resilient, and self-loving, but you don’t need to be ruthless.
Don’t forget that your values are more important than anything else, and losing yourself for a job is never worth it.
Leave the ruthlessness elsewhere and let’s be confident and calm instead.
