5 Ridiculously Simple Hacks to be More Effective at Work

Do you often catch yourself doing nothing at work, even though you have tons of materials to look through? Or find yourself writing a professional resume? If you do, welcome to the club! According to the recent research, around 70 percent of US workers are disengaged from their workday.

This fact alone explains why “productivity” has become such a buzzword in the last few years. It’s a big issue, for both companies and employees, and you should definitely find a way to overcome this problem and turn yourself into the super-productive professional.

1. Learn to prioritize.

Productive workers know how to prioritize their duties. You should try to do the same thing with your tasks because it will help you make it through the day smoothly. According to Jake Garner, an HR manager at proofreading services, the best way to prioritize is to divide duties into different categories:

• Important and urgent: These are the tasks you need to do immediately, so don’t leave them for later.
• Important, but not urgent: Such assignments come right after the first group of daily duties.
• Urgent, but not important: You can leave urgent but unimportant things for the late hours of your workday because you don’t need to concentrate on it too much.
• Not urgent and not important: If possible, try to delegate these tasks to your colleagues. If not, you can complete it once you get everything else done.

Some people are struggling with organization and time-management. Apps like Google Calendar can solve this problem, so we recommend you use it for scheduling purposes.

2. Avoid multitasking.

An average individual would probably tell you that he/she is great at multitasking, but here is a simple truth—people are terrible at doing multiple things at once. Multitasking is just a new age myth. A study revealed that only 2 percent of people can multitask effectively, while the remaining 98 percent are actually lessening their productivity without even realizing it.

There are all sorts of reasons why it’s such a terrible habit. First of all, multitasking is slowing you down because it takes longer to complete two different projects when you are switching attention back and forth from one thing to another.

Besides that, your memory is suffering. Can you remember every detail if you read a book and watch TV at the same time? Probably not! This also leads to making more mistakes since you are unable to handle too much information simultaneously.

These and many other facts prove you should give up on multitasking. This is actually one of the simplest hacks to increase productivity because it doesn’t require additional efforts—it only requires you to be smarter and use your time rationally.

3. Work in bursts.

Instead of multitasking, you should learn how to work in smaller bursts. Break down your job into a number of sections that demand less time and effort. After all, it’s much easier to handle everything if you don’t look at it as a big pile of work but rather as a set of minor units.

“You should focus on one task at a time and give your best to complete it within a limited amount of time. Then you can take a small break to regain strength and go back to the next assignment,” said a writer from a CV writing service. Doing things this way, you can follow the progress much easier than before and enjoy the feeling of getting things done more effectively and in a timely manner.

4. Change daily habits.

How you start your days is crucial for productivity improvement. It’s not the same whether you spend 15 minutes each morning reading news online or spend two hours chatting with colleagues and drinking a cup of coffee. Therefore, you should change daily habits to find the rhythm that makes you more job-oriented.

Resume writers found that social media, online shopping, personal emailing, and similar Internet-related activities cause a 40 percent loss of productivity. Try to eliminate all distractions that keep you away from professional duties – avoid social media, silence your phone is possible, turn down the music, etc.

You can leave all this for breaks in-between different projects, but don’t let it interrupt work. It may be difficult to accept it at first, but once you get used to the new rhythm it will make you much more effective.

5. Improve communication.

A lot of problems at work occur as the direct consequence of poor interpersonal communication between colleagues. Everyone is so stressed out these days that people don’t have patience or time to talk to their peers and agree about each other’s duties.

You don’t want to fall into this trap, so make sure to improve communication and discuss everything with your team members. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes a day, but the result will have a multiplicative effect and you will end up saving much more time and energy.

Conclusion

Productivity is the most important trait of a successful worker. However, numerous studies prove that a lot of employees waste time at work browsing the Internet and checking social media. If you are one of those procrastinators, you should try to reorganize and rearrange your daily routine.

In this post, we showed you five ridiculously simple hacks to be more effective at work. These tricks are easy but highly efficient, so don’t hesitate to give them a try—it might help you become a super-productive professional!