Organizing Your Work Tasks – 6 Tips

Introduction

Highly productive workers organizing your work tasks

Organizing work tasks is vital to being productive.  It is the foundation for better planning and executing your workday. This requires you to create a system where you can easily find what you need when you need it. It also necessitates arranging and scheduling time for the tasks that are most important to you. It’s true that organizing work tasks can go a long way in helping you achieve your goals.

6 Tips for Organizing Your Work Tasks

There are several ways you can go about organizing your work tasks and responsibilities to improve productivity, and we’ve included 6 tips below to help you get started:

  1. Set Goals
  2. Create Daily Task To-Do Lists
  3. Use a Planner
  4. Track Your Progress
  5. Declutter Your Email
  6. Keep a Well-arranged Work Environment
1. Set goals

Set goals when organizing work tasks

Setting achievable objectives for your workday will help you stay focused and productive. When you set specific goals with steps and a timeframe for completing them, it’s easier to organize your work into manageable tasks. Be sure to create and prioritize both your short-term and long-term goals to keep yourself on track!

Why?

Respond Effectively to Change

You must keep an open mind for surprises.  Events change and that dictates modifications to your goals.  This is a fluid exercise where you must review your goals periodically.  That frequency depends on your business and market and how swiftly changes occur (and their significance).

2. Create Daily Task To-Do Lists

to-do lists for organizing your work tasks

Task lists are different from goal lists. Goals represent how much you desire to attain and the timeframe when you want to attain it.  On the other hand, tasks are the steps you need to perform to arrive at that desired result.

To keep up productivity throughout your workday, try using a Task To-Do list or Daily Planner. To-do lists are simple yet highly effective lists that can help you maintain focus throughout the workday. Detail written significant or urgent activities on your Daily To-Do list and organize them by priority.

For instance, you could place what you must complete before the close of business for the day at the top of your list.  Document tasks that can be completed the next workday at the bottom of your list.

3. Use a Planner

Another of the ways you can go about organizing your work tasks is through use of a Planner.   A formal Planner is a first-rate tool (a small book) to evaluate the efficiency of your work schedule. You can use a Planner to track your daily, weekly, and monthly goals and activities. You’re more likely to achieve your objectives and recall important details when you keep a record of what has been done and what is coming up in the future.

There are many types of Planners (also called Diaries by our ‘friends across the pond’). Some Planners have a space for every day, while others are weekly or monthly. Think about what kind of Planner would best suit you and your work. If you work on your computer often, you could also consider using a digital planner or app.

I use 2 Planners.  I have a dated Weekly Planner that documents work at a higher level.

Then I have a Daily Planner that breaks the week into 5 separate days and details the individual tasks for each workday with attention to more specificity for accomplishments I judge can be finished each given day.

4. Track Your Progress

Tracking your progress is an effective approach to ensure you are attaining your goals in the timeframe you planned. It is also an excellent approach to maintain your motivation.  when you recognize the amount of progress you’ve already realized it’s much easier to continue toward completion. You can also use progress tracking to help you figure out what times of the day and week you are the most productive and schedule your high priority tasks for those times in the future.

5. Declutter Your Email

If you’re like most workers, your inbox is clogged with emails. Cleaning up, arranging, and sorting your mails keeps them structured and makes it easier to locate important messages.

Create labeled folders in your email to manage all your messages and filters to automatically organize new emails into their proper folders. Labeling emails helps you stay on top of replies and keeps important and related documents together in one location.

6. Keep a Well-Arranged Work Environment

organizing your work tasks starts with clean workspace

The final one of the 6 tips for organizing your work tasks is keeping a well-organized work environment. You should be able to find quickly and easily everything you need and want in an organized workspace. This helps your workflow be more consistent. Replacing tools and documents into their proper place, keeping personal items separate from work materials, and straightening your work area every afternoon are all examples of keeping a well-arranged environment. An organized workstation makes staying productive much easier.

Effect of Disorganization

Clutter in your workstation distracts your thought processes and diverts your attention from your important activities. Remove any thing from your workspace that you don’t use on a regular basis. Tidy up your work area at the end of each day and declutter once a week to keep things well-arranged and organized.

organizing your work tasks focus and productivity

Summary

We offered 6 tips for organizing your work tasks gleaned from our experience with highly productive workers.  Your goal for being more organized is to help you better plan your day and work more productively. When you’re able to focus on your high priority tasks and complete them on-time, you feel better about yourself, and your work and your job becomes more satisfying. There are several tips listed here that will help you get started with becoming more organized and productive.

Start out trying one or two at a time and see how they work for you. Remember, there is no one right way to be organized. Incorporate which of the 6 tips of organizing your work tasks to see what works best for you.  That way you can achieve your goals and propel your workday to higher achievement.

Flexicrew Guidance

We are familiar with workers who are efficient at organizing work tasks. Many of them we have trained to do so to improve their job and career prospects.

If you need assistance finding individuals who possess such greater productivity qualities, contact one of our recruitment professionals Today.

5 Benefits of Greater Productivity

Introduction

Benefits of greater productivity

There are many benefits of greater productivity at work. We often assume that being productive requires immense amounts of effort. But in reality, effective productivity should make your work life easier, not harder.

5 Benefits of Greater Productivity

Read on to learn more about how you can improve your job and your career and enjoy these 5 benefits of greater productivity:

    1. Accomplish More
    2. Make Fewer Mistakes
    3. Experience Less Stress
    4. More Opportunities Will be Available
    5. Relax More
  1. Accomplish More

Accomplish more with greater productivity

You can accomplish more when you are productive and put your most essential activities first. Three important productivity strategies for ensuring that you stay on track. They include putting all your tasks in your calendar, having a dedicated time block for each task (allowing you to keep work tasks separate), and avoiding multitasking.

The widely held belief that multitasking is a path to greater work productivity and completing more tasks in less time is a false idea. However, when multitasking, you actually divide your attention between several stimuli. Therefore, you cannot focus on your responsibilities. A better alternative is if you produce focused, meaningful effort on just one task at a time.

  1. Make Fewer Mistakes

Yes, one of the benefits of greater productivity is making fewer mistakes while working on a project. Nothing kills productivity faster than realizing you have made a mistake and need to rework the task or even start over completely. Instead of moving on to the next task on your list, you are still stuck working on the same thing. Possibly, you became distracted, lost focus, are stressed, or feeling tired. All these things make it more likely that you will make a mistake.

Productivity can help you get your tasks right on the first go ’round. Being productive requires keeping your time and tasks organized and prioritized, which in turn reduces the number of forgotten tasks, missed details, and avoidable mistakes.

  1. Experience Less Stress

Research highlights that most workers in this environment feel a significant amount of stress. And that can keep us from focusing, getting things accomplished, and improving our health. High stress levels can lead to low energy levels, because all your energy is being used up by your brain stressing out!

High stress drains workers, leading to low levels of energy. This occurs when your brain spends energy stressing about work. Stress can also make you more prone to illness, both physically and mentally.

Thankfully, one of the benefits of greater productivity is stress reduction. Being productive allows you to accomplish your tasks in the time allotted. That helps minimize stress.

  1. More Opportunities Will Be Available

Being productive means, you are better managing your time, which can open the door to new opportunities. If you do not have good control over your time, you may find that you are missing things that could help you improve your job performance and enhance your career growth. Focusing on productivity and planning not only gives you time to complete your must-do assignments, but time to accomplish the activities you want to do as well.

So, surprisingly, having additional opportunities is another of the benefits of greater productivity.

  1. Relax More

Spending countless consecutive hours working without breaks can seriously impact your mental health. Breaks give you time to recover and refresh after a period of lengthy, focused work. If you do not take breaks regularly, you will have a harder time focusing.

Productivity comes into play because it is a way to make time for yourself. Taking time for yourself and relaxing will help improve your overall wellbeing. And as a bonus, relaxation can help foster creativity and usher in a new perspective.

Working too many consecutive hours gives up benefits of greater productivity

Moving Forward to Gain the Benefits of Greater Productivity

Most personnel want to be more productive and achieve the most out of their time at work. However, to reach those objectives, we may have to start with an unexpected first step.  We often must alter our workspace in a manner that nurtures productivity.

Customize a workspace at home or in your workplace that your brain learns to link with productivity and concentration. Organize your workspace with all the tools you regularly use for work. That way you do not have to spend time looking for what you need. And finally, help eliminate distractions by putting your cell phone away, closing unnecessary browser tabs, or even putting up a Do Not Disturb sign near your workspace indicating you are working and should not be interrupted until you complete your task.

Start by determining your most productive hours during the day and schedule your most difficult tasks for them.

Conclusion

Being more productive can take time, especially when it comes to creating new work habits and setting boundaries. But as you have learned from the list above, the benefits of greater productivity are well worth it!

Benefits of highly productive worker

Looking for ways to achieve greater productivity?  You may be interested in our article, “5 Habits of Highly Productive Workers.” Or, “5 Enhanced Productivity Tools – Not What You Think.”

Flexicrew Support

Employers, if you need assistance finding individuals who possess greater productivity qualities, contact one of our recruitment professionals Today.

Employees, If you are a looking for the ideal employer who cares about diligent workers like you, give us a call. We may be able to direct you to a workplace that ideally fits and recognizes your strengths.

Nighttime Work Focus Actually Better than Days

Is your nighttime work focus actually better than daytime?  Biorhythms?  Habit?

Nighttime Work Focus

Introduction

We often face tasks while at work that we cannot complete during the day. If you have low level anxiety or suffer from perfectionism you may procrastinate your work through the day. But, this is not always a problem. Then when the deadline of night comes along, your body shoots out a little cortisol and you feel alive, clear-minded and focused. Then you may start to feel a little wired as the night goes on.

Some recent research has shown that you can get more work done at night.  However, you must still get enough sleep afterwards. For night owls, this is even more true.

There are two reasons why some people are more focused and can work more productively in the evening  They are: 1. because you are more relaxed and 2. there are less distractions.

This is true not just for night owls, but for most workers in general.

Nighttime work focus means more productivity

More Relaxed at Night

At the end of the day, most workers breathe an audible sigh of relief—the major tasks are done, and your mind is free until tomorrow. For some this means that their minds shut off for the evening, but for vampires it can provide a burst of motivation.

Greater relaxation at night yields focus and productivity for work

This is because we are more relaxed if there is less expected of us at that particular time. Chances are, your boss or coworkers won’t be calling you at midnight or 3 am.

Sense of Relaxation

There is also the sense of relaxation that comes with:

  • Lack of expectation for news or communication.
    • New laws, policies, or major updates are not likely to be released at night.
  • You don’t expect to make or receive phone calls from associates or your boss.
  • There will likely not be new work assignments designated in the late evening hours.

This lack of expectations allows your mind to relax and makes you better prepared to complete work tasks efficiently.

Fewer Distractions

There is much less going on in the evening than during the day, including:

  • Minimized contact with others
  • Less outside noises
  • Fewer tasks to complete

Nightowls work focus and productivity

When you are faced with limited external stimuli, your ability to focus improves drastically. People associate the day with activities such as commuting, fitness routines, school, and work, but our nights are generally considered open. The song “Night Time, My Time” comes to mind.

The truth is that during the day, there is stuff going on all around employees at work—its inevitable to get sucked in from time to time, which diminishes your ability to focus. At night, this is a non-issue.

Conclusion

The bottom line in all of this is that nighttime work focus begins mainly for night owls, as there are some diehard morning people who are most productive in the very early hours of the morning. However, for those night-dwellers, nighttime work focus is greatly improved because of being in a more relaxed state.  They face fewer distractions that could hinder concentration.  Yet, graveyard and night shifts are a rarity.  Approximately three-fourths of U.S. workers work day jobs.  They start their workday in the four-hour span between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Yet. as remote work remains a “thing” in the future of work, employees can set their own schedule to parallel the times to work that match their most productive period.

Flexicrew Support

Does your organization need more 2nd or 3rd shift workers?  Flexicrew has willing, hard working shift candidates  available Right Now!  Contact Flexicrew Staffing today and we will quickly deliver those night owls with nighttime work focus your organization needs.

Manage Your Energy for High Productivity in 4 Areas

Manage your energy for high productivity

To effectively manage your energy for high productivity, shift your emphasis to your own needs and investing more in yourself.  So you stay motivated and able to perform at a higher level for your employer. You need to recognize energy-depleting behaviors. Then take active steps to change them or delete them completely.

Energy is very important when you’re aiming for high productivity. Look to successful people and ask how they became that way.  Invariably, they will always say energy as one of their main drives to success. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main sources in you: your body, emotions, mind, and spirit.

1. Physical Energy for High Productivity

It is no news that improper nutrition, exercise, sleep, and rest affect your energy levels, emotion management and focus. Nonetheless, you may be guilty of ignoring ways to practice healthy behaviors, given all the other demands in your life.

You may be doing things such as skipping breakfast, failing to express appreciation to others, struggling to focus on one thing at a time, or spending too little time on activities that give them a sense of purpose. While it is not surprising that these behaviors are counterproductive, having them all listed in one place can become uncomfortable, sobering, and galvanizing. This may sound harsh, but is actually a necessary first step to restoring your body energy.

The next step is to identify rituals for building and renewing physical energy.

Example of Physical Energy Supporting Productivity

I read about a vice president at Wachovia who was significantly overweight.  He ate poorly, lacked a regular exercise routine, worked long hours, and typically slept no more than five or six hours a night.

But, then he began exercising with cardio and strength training. Another practice he also started was to go to bed at a regular time and sleeps longer. Finally the VP changed his meals from two big ones a day to small meals every three hours. The aim was to stabilize glucose levels over the course of the day, avoiding peaks and valleys.

And the result?

The positive result was this vice president lost 50 pounds and his energy levels soared.

Another Physical Energy Practice Supporting High Productivity

Another way to maintain energy is taking brief, regular breaks at specific intervals throughout the workday. We have “Ultradian rhythms” which refers to 90- to 120-minute cycles during which our bodies swing through high and low energy states. At the end of each cycle, the body displays a need of recovery like restlessness, yawning, hunger, and being unfocused. Usually this gets ignored and in turn burns down your energy reservoir faster.

If done properly, intermittent breaks can increase and sustain performance. It is possible to recover well in a short time if it involves a ritual that allows you to separate briefly from work and let your mind rest. You can talk to a colleague about something other than work, listen to music, or walk up and down stairs.

2. Emotional Energy for High Productivity

When you can take more control of your emotions, you can significantly improve the quality of your energy. To do this, you must become aware of how you feel at various points of time and its effect on your effectiveness.

People tend to perform best when they’re feeling positive energy, and won’t perform well when they feel the opposite. Unfortunately, people tend to slip into negative emotions and trigger their fight-or-flight mechanism.  Especially when they experience relentless demands and unexpected challenges. The signs may be irritability impatience, anxiety and insecurity. These are big culprits in draining your energy.

One ritual for erasing negative emotions is “buying time.” You can take deep abdominal breaths and exhale slowly for 10 seconds to relax and recover, and defuse your fight-or-flight response.

Expressing appreciation to others is a practice which is as beneficial to both the giver as well as the receiver. It can take the form of a handwritten note, an e-mail, a call, or a conversation. The more detailed and specific the appreciation given, the higher the impact. To achieve higher success at doing this, like any other rituals, set aside some time to do it.

Emotional Energy Practices for High Productivity

Finally, you can change the stories you tell yourself about the events in your life. You may often observe the reverse.  People cast themselves in the victim role rather than being thankful of what they have.

This is powerful because you are more aware of the difference between the facts and the way you interpret them. This may seem obvious but you can actually discover that you have a choice about how to view something and recognize how powerfully your story influences your emotions.

To change a perception to a story you want to tell, view it through any of three alternatives, represented by lenses. With the reverse lens, ask yourself what the others involved will say and are they actually true. Use the long lens, look at how it impacts you in the future. Viewing through the wide lens, ask yourself how can you improve and learn from this.

3. Mental Energy for High Productivity

Multitasking, while sounding and looking cool, actually undermines productivity. This is because a temporary shift in attention from one task to another increases the amount of time to finish a task by as much as 25%.You are likelier to be more efficient to fully focus for 90 to 120 minutes, take a true break, and then fully focus on the next activity. This focus and break cycle is called “Ultradian Sprints.”

Energy for high productivity ultradian sprint

Once you can see how much you struggle to concentrate, you can combat this by creating rituals to reduce the interruptions that bother you. Start out with an exercise that makes you face the impact of your daily distractions.

Example of Mental Energy for High Productivity

A real-life example is from another vice president at Wachovia, who designed 2 rituals to increase focus. The first one is to leave his desk and go into a conference room whenever he has a task that requires concentration to stop distractions from phone calls.

The result is he finishes reports in a third of the time. The second is by not picking up any phone calls in meetings with the people who report to him. This is because it stretched the time of the meetings and cost his full attention. He now only answers the voice-mail messages in his downtime.

Here’s another method:  Instead of replying your emails as soon as they come in, set time to answer them at specific times of the day. This actually can allow you to clear your inbox faster if you fully focus on your emails for 45 minutes at a time.

Another way to mobilize mental energy is to focus systematically on activities that impact you the most in the long term. Identify the most important challenge for the next day and make it their very first priority when you arrive at work in the morning.

What is most important is energy for high productivity

4. Take Advantage of Your Belief System Energy for High Productivity

Your vitality or inner force is at its highest when your work and activities are consistent with what you value and have a sense of meaning and purpose. If the work you’re doing really matters to you, you will have more energy, focus, and perseverance.

However, the demands and pace of business don’t leave much space for these issues,  And many workers don’t even know that meaning and purpose are potential sources of energy. When you experience the value of the rituals you establish, you can start to see that being attentive to your own needs intensely influences their effectiveness and satisfaction at work.

Give yourself the opportunity to ask questions about what really mattered to you. You will find that these will be both illuminating and energizing. This can be highly important and thoughtful because it will really make you aware of what you want to be really remembered for.

To access the energy of the human spirit clarify priorities and establish rituals in three categories:

  1. Doing what you do best and enjoy most at work;
  2. Consciously allocating time and energy to the areas of your life, like work, family, health, service to others that you deem most important;
  3. And living your core values in your daily behaviors.
Wrap-Up Energy for High Productivity and Performance

Remember, managing your time is not nearly as critical as overseeing the ways you invest your energy for high productivity and personal renewal.

Further Reading for Energy for High Productivity:   The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal.

5 Tips to Supercharge your Productivity

Supercharge your Productivity

To supercharge your productivity is a major goal for many employers since more can get done if you are in a high-productivity environment. While this concept may seem simple, to fully understand what it means to supercharge productivity, the definition cannot be taken literally. You actually must have a strong grasp of this concept and fully use it to your company’s advantage.

Supercharge your productivity

To put it in simple terms: supercharged productivity means that you are putting out products more quickly or completing tasks at higher speed than before. Theoretically, it made sense – the more products your firm produces or services your employees complete, the more positive profits are generated, making supercharged productivity a priority for many businesses.

There are some things, however, that studies say cause your work productivity to be lower, such as unfavorable environment, distractions and plain old procrastination.

You cannot always control your environment, but the good news is you can control what you, yourself get done. Plus, you can learn from others to be even more productive. There are probably more direct ways to help your productivity increase such as a conducive environment or closing the Facebook tab on your browser, But these are small hacks that actually only do so much. There are more meaningful ways to be your best. And you can learn these skills by taking some cues from the world’s most successful people.

1. Have Big Goals in Mind

First, you can set big goals and then act to fully accomplish them. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a master at this, making room each year for a new challenge, which he says allows him to “learn new things and grow outside my work at Facebook.” And it pays! He’s now fluent in Mandarin and is meeting new people all the time.

Looking at it backwards can help too, link Amazon’s Jeff Bezos does. He makes room for big goals by starting with the customer’s needs and working backward to build skills to get that work done faster. As Bezos said it, “We learn whatever skills we need to service the customer. We build whatever technology we need to service the customer.”

2. Give Each Day A Theme

Try copying CEO Jack Dorsey for this. When splitting his time between Square and Twitter, he stays productive by giving each day a theme.  Mondays for management, Tuesdays for product, etc. As he explains, “There is interruption all the time, but I can quickly deal with an interruption and then know that it’s Tuesday, I have product meetings, and I need to focus on product stuff.”

Another tip you can use is the “no-meeting Wednesdays” Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz believes that this gives him and his team a good amount of time each week for “focused, heads-down work.”

3. Set Limits

Set limits to supercharge your productivity

You can only spend so much time focusing on something. After that, it’s time to move on to the next important thing. For example, former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn sets only allocates 1 and a half hours to on single-purpose, non-operational meetings, with half the time for presentation and the other half for discussions.

To supercharge your productivity another thing you can limit is the length of your emails. The Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says she responds to every single work email, but she saves time by keeping the responses short. “I would rather give a short, quick, incomplete answer than wait and do it better,” she says.

4. Deep Work Zone

Focus, focus, focus. This is perhaps most important secret to supercharge your productivity. Bill Gates would set time for Deep Work, where he would allocate time each week to do his most challenging work without any distractions — no stopping, not even for sleep. Cal Newport, author of the book “Deep Work” said, “Deep work is important … not because distraction is evil, but because it enabled Bill Gates to start a billion-dollar industry in less than a semester.”

Supercharge your productivity

5. Streamline Decisions

Jeff Bezos makes a lot of decisions every day. Since this can be time-consuming, he’s developed a four-step process for navigating his business more quickly. First, One-size-fits-all decisions are a no-no. “Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors,” he writes in his letter to shareholders. “Those decisions can use a light-weight process.  ”Second, make the decision when you are at 70% of your intended information. “If you wait for 90%…you’re probably being slow,” he writes.

Third: disagree and commit. “This phrase will save a lot of time,” he writes. “If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?’ By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.”

And fourth, address the real misalignments early and focus on them immediately. “Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views,” he writes. “They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion.”

Supercharge your productivity

Boosting Productivity and Avoiding Multitasking

Boosting Productivity and Time Management

Ask any successful business or entrepreneur or supervisor out there, and I’m sure they will tell you boosting productivity to higher levels is a crucial aspect in ensuring revenue company growth and achieving individual success.

In fact, many individuals and corporations willingly invest large sums of money and effort for boosting productivity. Higher levels of productivity in employees (whether as part of an organization or alone) helps to bring them closer to their success targets within a shorter time period, and prevents needless wastage of time, money and effort.

Boosting productivity to improve revenue and company success

The dictionary defines productivity as “the quality, state, or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance, or bring forth goods and services”. To explain it simply on a more individual level – it is just how much one worker can get done in a set period of time.

And when productivity is mentioned, time management is usually also brought up; they go hand in hand. Both are strongly correlated – higher levels of productivity is usually the result of better time management.

All That You Know About Time Management Is Wrong

Yup, you got that right.

Your understanding of time management is very likely…

Wrong!

All you know about employee productivity is wrong

Time management is in fact, a misnomer. Time cannot be managed or influenced; it is something that is pretty much out of our control. All of us, despite our social or financial background, are allocated 24 hours in a day, no more or less. Once gone, there’s no way we can get it back.

Our day-to-day responsibilities – be they family or work, take up a large portion of our time. Not only that, time is fleeting and so easily stolen without recognizing it. Unexpected things pop up all the time. Priorities change. Things can go terribly wrong. Individuals get sick, or tired reducing their productivity.

You can only do so much – you’re just a single worker in likely a team project, after all.

However, you can, control YOU. And your CHOICES. Time management is more correctly, all about self-discipline and task management. It’s the management of expectations as well as interruptions. It is the ability to manage your actions, habits and priorities based on the time you are given. It is understanding what matters most, making a choice to make room for that in your workday, and getting rid of the unnecessary, unimportant stuff that’s hogging up your valuable time.

Also, time management is not a one system fits all method. There is no perfect method. Different individuals have different styles – we’re all wired differently in terms of personality type, identity and individual life circumstances. Some may find that a to-do list works for them; others may find to-do lists hard to follow and demotivating. It’s all about finding your groove – different strokes for different folks.

Multitasking for Boosting Productivity?

Multitasking because you want to manage time better?

Bad idea.

Contrary to popular belief, faster and more is NOT always better. Multitasking is one way to destroy your productivity levels rather than boosting productivity.

avoiding multitasking to boost productivity

Sure… you seem to get more done this way.

However, you are probably more likely to make mistakes – which will result in your having to repeat assignments. Stick to focusing on one task at a time, and taking sufficient breaks whenever possible – you’ll stand to accomplish more this way. Now, we’ve mentioned that juggling multiple tasks at one time is counterproductive. However, striving to complete each task no matter how long it takes is also not a wise idea when it comes to time management – another common misconception regarding time management. Restrict your time spent on a task, and schedule accordingly.

As you can see, a lot of what we know regarding time management is, in fact, myths. Many of us have skewed perceptions or misinformation when it comes to time management. These myths, over time, through the workers around us or the media we consume, become deeply ingrained within our mindsets.  We eventually regard them as facts and hold on to them.  As a result, we prevent ourselves from truly and fully boosting productivity in any aspect of our work and careers.

4 Simple Ways to Take Charge of Your Work Habits

There’s an old quote that perfectly shows why you need to take charge of your habits – be they work habits or personal. “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” by Warren Buffet. If you don’t take charge of your habits, even ones that seem harmless, they will easily control you.

While work habits are easily formed and followed through, especially once your brain recognizes them as habits, you can still change them. Always remember that you are in control, not your habits.  So, you can change bad patterns , even those you’ve had for a long time.

C

Habit expert and writer of the book ‘Atomic Habits’ James Clear has four rules for forming habits that can help you take charge of them. Whether the habits are good or bad, you can still use these rules to gain some measure of control. These rules, according to Atomic Habits, are:

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying

Let’s go over them one-by-one.

1.Make it Obvious

To take charge of your habits, you need to make them obvious. For example, let’s say you want to start running. If your running shoes and gear are in the closet, then that habit isn’t apparent. Instead of sifting through your wardrobe for your shoes, your brain will just want to stay in bed.

So, you can put your running shoes by the door and make sure that they are the first thing you see in the morning. Then you’ll be reminded that you should run today. To break bad habits, you want to hide things away – make them less obvious.

2. Make it Attractive

With habits, most people focus on the long-term goals. You might say, “I will go for a run to get my beach body in ten weeks.” While that goal is noble, it does nothing when running in the cold and feeling miserable.

So, make your routines attractive and give yourself a reward or incentive to get it done. Maybe run with a friend or have your running trail pass by a place where you can have breakfast or see the city’s sunrise. For bad patterns , add extra steps or make continuing the tendency very unattractive.

3. Make it Easy

Remember, the brain always takes on the path of least resistance. If that path happens to lead to your habit, then more power to you. It might seem counter-intuitive, but instead of telling yourself. I will run a mile today; say that you will only run a block.

Having smaller micro-habits will make everything easier and will help you do them. Most people go too big, get discouraged, and then get burned out. But running a block, reading one page of a book, or doing one push-up is something that takes no time at all. Plus, if you achieve a  small one, why not do another and another?

For bad habits, add more resistance to them and make them harder to achieve.

4. Make it Satisfying

Reward yourself along the journey toward achieving your desired habits, and you’ll keep doing them. Maybe if you go running for thirty days, give yourself some type of reward. Have a good meal, watch a movie, do something you wouldn’t normally do, and also reflect on how running has made you a better person than you were 30 days ago.

For bad habits, remove the satisfaction from them, and you won’t see them as a reward.

You Are In Control of Your Work Habits

Remember that every habit comes from your own brain, and you are the one in control. If you want to make or break a habit, you are the only one who can do so. Follow these four steps, and you’ll find that it gets easier and easier to take charge and make your work habits work for you.

Ask the Flexpert…Name some Techniques that Lower Employee Workplace Stress

7 Simple Tips to Lower Employee Stress

In these uncertain times, even effective organizations undergo stress and worry. Human Resource personnel play a critical role in monitoring employee stress levels and modeling effective behCharaciture of Flexpertaviors for the workforce. to maintain a culture that triggers less unease and tension for employees, improves resilience, boosts performance, and builds feelings of value for all members of work teams.

Signs of Employee Stress

Quarrelling workers, hassling managers, poor communicating peers who don’t reply, supervisors who are emailing while you’re talking to them… all these personnel are too harried to observe the basic tenets of respect and concern for their co-workers or subordinates.

You should be aware of these 7 techniques because they merit your attention for improving the tone in your workplace:

  1. Institute “zero-tolerance” guidelines against toxic or offensive talk.
  2. Foster behavior by managers who hear negativity to prompt employees that their good performance or interactions compensates for any small mistakes. Advise employees that it is acceptable and even desirable to attempt some outcome even if tit results in some honest errors.
  3. Inform your workers what they are doing well. A few times per week a distribute a positive quotation that motivates them or at least gets them thinking about positive actions. Blend in snippets of positive company or industry news or positive results by an employee. The idea is if people see something positive the first thing each day that sets a positive tone for the entire day.
  4. Encourage leaders to praise employees in front of their peers.
  5. Support bosses in recognizing each employees’ strengths, and then have them delegate projects that mirror each employee’s strengths. Build work groups whose members’ skills complement one another.
  6. Arrange for lunchtime speakers to educate employees about stress-management. Upload stress-reducing exercises to your internal website.
  7. Regularly recap for employees the value of their output to customers or other co-workers or to support the company’s goals.
Reduce Stress with a Staffing Agency’s Support

Flexicrew can help improve your work environment, reduce your anxiety and stress by assisting you with workforce planning and recruiting the quality talent that you need in this uncertain time.  Contact one of our workforce professionals Today!

How To Protect Your Mental Health During The Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been brutal on the state of mental health in Americans. You’ve been limited in how you can celebrate birthdays, graduations, and weddings and even funerals. You’ve seen loved ones hooked up to a ventilator fighting for their lives. You’ve got an entire hygienic routine every time you leave the house: Wear a mask, stay six feet apart, wash your hands, and repeat.

Staying Grounded

Here’s what you can do to protect your mental health during this ongoing pandemic.

Get Some Exercise

You don’t have to go to the gym to stay in shape. There are actually plenty of exercises and routines that you can do from the comfort of your own living room. That includes exercises like push-ups, jumping jacks, and even going for a walk or jog around the block.

On top of building your endurance and strength, exercise can trigger the release of endorphins in your system. According to the Mayo Clinic, these are known as the “feel-good” hormone and will naturally boost a low mood during such trying times.

Stay in Contact With Positive Co-Workers

Not being able to meet with those you regularly work with can be detrimental to your mental health. Prolonged loneliness and social isolation can lower your productivity and increase your risk of certain mental health disorders, substance abuse issues, or even suicide.

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that loneliness increases the risk of serious health disorders. The best way to avoid these consequences is by staying in touch with loved ones via daily or weekly phone calls, video calls, or text messages.

Leave the House

Some states still have limitations when it comes to where you can go, what you can do, and who you can see. Yet at this point in the pandemic, you realize that your mood declines and you feel fatigued the longer you stay put in the house.

In a study published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, vitamin D, which can be absorbed by the body from sunlight, is a great mood booster and actually is used to treat depression. So, if you’re feeling down and lonely in the house without physical interactions with your team members, spend some time in the backyard or go for a walk at the park.

Reach Out to a Therapist

If you were already struggling with your mental health prior to the pandemic, there’s a good chance that your situation has actually worsened as the months continued. Luckily, the forced closure of most mental health facilities doesn’t mean that you currently have no access to care. Many counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists have moved to telemedicine for the time being. Scheduling an appointment with a therapist via video call is a great way to process your emotions and learn how to cope.

Get a Pet (We’re not joking)

Most people would appreciate coming home from work every day to be greeted by a friendly dog or cat. But when loneliness and sadness become excessive during quarantine, a pet may be exactly what you need to feel better.

The connection between pet ownership and mental health has been long studied. In fact, a survey conducted by the Human Animal Bond Research Institute, mental health improvements were seen in about 74% of pet owners.

Final Thoughts

During a pandemic that doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon with new variants popping up periodically, it’s important that you prioritize your mental health. Not only will this make you feel less lonely and like you have a greater purpose, but it’ll also save you from a ton of emotional turmoil that you’ll have to sort through once COVID-19 is gone for good.

5 Ways Workers Waste Time Every Day

Check out the most common 5 ways workers waste time every day. Do you find yourself doing any of them? This post will address some time management strategies. They can help you become more efficient and productive and be able to get the most out of your work day.

Let’s get started.

5 of the Biggest Timewasters of Your Day at work

5 ways workers waste time every day

Even if you’re one of the more dedicated employees and a very organized person, you still waste time. Whether you work from home or in the workplace, we’re all guilty of getting distracted and losing focus. It may not be deliberate and you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it until it’s too late.

Here are 5 ways workers waste time every day. See if you can relate.

1. Social Media/Emails/Texts

It’s become a vital part of our lives. But the world won’t stop turning if you don’t look at your social media for 15 minutes.

Another big distraction is hearing that too familiar ‘ding’ that comes with a new email or text message. It prevents you from finishing the task at hand because you keep looking at your phone every five minutes.

Picture this scenario: you’re in the middle of work when your phone beeps. You reach for your phone to see your incoming message. So, you go from message to email to Facebook to Instagram. Then, when you’re done, you notice that 20 minutes have gone by.

Research shows that each time you get distracted, even for a couple of minutes, your brain needs more than 20 minutes to refocus. Imagine how much wasted time that amounts to at the end of the day!

The Fix: Avoid randomly checking social media, emails, or texts. Instead, set up a certain time during your day for doing just that. In the meantime, turn off any notifications or mute your phone.

2. Organizing and Preparing

You’re probably wondering: how is this a time-waster? But too often we fall down the rabbit hole of ‘organizing’ our day. Sometimes, we take too far that we actually run out of time to do any of the things on our list.

The Fix: Find an online planner and to-do-list. Then, pick one day out of the week where you plan out the whole seven days in advance. Schedule in work-related projects, meetings, and deadlines. You can also include a workout schedule and get-togethers with associates.

3. Multitasking

Multitasking: another thing that we do to trick ourselves into believing we’re being productive. Yet, the sad truth is, multitasking wastes a ton of time.

It’s counter-productive when your attention is divided among several tasks at once. In other words, it’s just another form of distraction.

The Fix: It’s simple. Just put all your attention and focus on one task at a time. When you’re done, move on to the next task, and so on.

4. Checking the News

In this day and age, it seems something is happening in the news every five minutes. So, it’s easy to use the news as an excuse for procrastination. After all, we all want to be in the loop when it comes to politics, sports, and local news.

The Fix: Force yourself to stay away from checking news updates every half hour. You can use sheer self-discipline, or you can use a site blocker.

One great example is the Stay Focused Chrome app. It helps you ‘hide’ certain websites for, say, 45 minutes. Then, tell the app you want to spend 20 minutes on the so-and-so website. After the 20 minutes are done, the app will block you again until your next break.

5. Doing Assignments

The problem isn’t with the activities themselves; it’s when you do them.

You might be sitting at your desk, working away when you notice a dusty shelf or a cluttered work station. So, you do the responsible thing and start cleaning and decluttering.

You tell yourself that it’ll only take five minutes. Then, when you’re done straightening the entire room/office, the day is over! And you still haven’t finished what you’re initially working on.

The Fix: For chores, set up one or two days during the week when you do all the decluttering. This way, even if you see something in your work space that catches your attention, you can push back in your mind and wait until ‘chore day’ rolls around.

A Final Note

We all get the same amount of time each day: 86,2400 seconds, 1,440 minutes, or 24 hours. It’s up to you to figure out how you’re going to spend that time. Sadly, many of us spend our days doing things that don’t really add any value to our lives—or our employer’s for that matter.

The good news is you can train yourself to focus more and have fewer distractions. Make a conscious effort to add purpose and value to your work assignments and follow through. You’ll soon notice you’re getting more done during your day than ever before!  And you’ll avoid the 5 ways workers waste time every day.