Being more productive at work involves overcoming procrastination, advancing your career, and hopefully increasing your wage or salary! Here are five ways to increase your job satisfaction and efficacy.
5 Ways to be More Productive at Work
1. Set a time limit on the “worst” tasks. If you hate balancing the books or making cold calls to clients, promise yourself you’ll only do it for 30 minutes or an hour. Set aside just that amount of time, and reward yourself afterward with one of your favorite job responsibilities or a favorite after work activity. This can even help you be more productive at home, if you're a telecommuter!
2. Let yourself do a bad job the first time. Go ahead: write a bad speech, create a boring power point presentation, or draw an ugly company logo. To be more productive at work and overcome procrastination, you may need to let go of perfectionist tendencies. Lower the bar when you want to get the job done but don’t feel motivated to start it. Once you get the dreck out of your system, you’ll be free to move onwards and upwards (and your wage may increase, too!).
3. Work with your rhythms. To advance your career, do the "hardest" work before lunch if you’re a morning person, or mid-afternoon if you’re a night owl. Getting the job done when you’re tired is much more difficult – especially if it’s a job you dread. Being aware of when your energy peaks is a great way to overcome procrastination at work. If you’re working as a telecommuter, you may find it easier to work with your energy peaks because your hours may be more flexible.
4. Savor the past. Remember that article you published, the speech everyone loved, or the client you won over? To be more productive at work, enjoy the victorious feelings – and picture yourself feeling the same when you’ve completed this job. If you’re self-employed, remember the increased productivity, which translated to a wage increase. Simply savoring how great your professional image was in the past can motivate you to advance your career now.
5. Break a big project down. If you’re writing a book, break it up into chapter outlines or a book proposal. If you’re cleaning a house, start in a small room – a bathroom, for instance – and work your way up. To be more productive at work, it helps to start with the small, easy tasks and move to the larger, more difficult ones. This helps your professional image, too. If your clients know that you have a strategy, they may feel reassured that you’ll get the job done and overcome procrastination.
If you found 5 Ways to be More Productive at Work helpful, try:
- Office Pools Increase Work Unhappiness
- When You Hate Your Job
- Reading People at Work
- Finding the Right Timing at Work- Anita Roddick
Source: Making Work Work: New Strategies for Surviving and Thriving at the Office by Julie Morgenstern.
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