23 Great Ways to Increase Your Productivity (Part 2)

Since the pandemic has hit, workers have experienced even longer work weeks. Recent studies show that on average employees worldwide work an average of 9.5 unpaid hours of overtime per week. Coupled with a glamorized “overwork” culture, burnout will probably not be solved anytime soon. With this as a backdrop it is important to consider how one can reduce the impact of stress and thereby undesirable health consequences. One way is to work effectively and efficiently – in other words increase your productivity.

In this way you can avoid wasting valuable resources such as time and energy and as a result bypass unnecessary stress and anxiety. By being productive you are more likely to reach your goals and experience success. This of course is a critical factor for having a fulfilling and satisfying work experience.

In the last post we covered the first 5 of my top 23 productivity tips:

• Make a schedule
• Take breaks
• Minimize distractions
• Take advantage of multitasking
• Procrastinate purposefully

Here are four more easy ways to increase your productivity.

6. Just Start

You can significantly increase your productivity by making a schedule, writing to-do lists and prioritizing tasks. However, it is possible to spend too much time planning. Overplanning, especially in dynamic work environments with a degree of unpredictability, can be a waste of time. In addition, it is possible to become paralyzed and indecisive when you have an incredible workload. You don’t know where to start and spend too much time considering where to begin. In such cases, my advice is just start. This will help you to get out of your rut, cognitively activated and most importantly help you reduce your mountain of tasks. Once you have gained some momentum, it will be easier to prioritize.

7. Increase Your Productivity by Managing Your Energy

In my opinion, this is one of the most important points for consideration. We are not robots that can consistently maintain the same level of output and work non-stop. These productivity tips are not aimed at making us work like robots! As previously stated, the goal is to avoid unnecessary stress and have a more fulfilling work experience.

All human beings have their own internal rhythm. For some it is easy to rise early while others like to snooze a little longer. Regarding work productivity, it is the same. People differ in the times when they are naturally most productive. When are you highly alert, more creative and able to work best? You can graph out your energy potential using time of day on the X-axis and level of energy on the Y-axis.

I am most concentrated in the morning and during the last part of the workday. For whatever reason, from about 11am to 2pm my energy takes a dip. With this knowledge, I try to schedule tasks that need a lot of concentration and uninterrupted attention during my peak times. In this way, I can optimize my performance according to my energy potential.

8. See the Opportunity in Repetitive Tasks

Every job has mundane, repetitive tasks that we don’t like to do. We sometimes try to avoid these tasks or feel frustrated when we must do them. For example, I personally don’t like entering data. One question you can ask yourself is, “How can I actually benefit from doing this?”

We can reframe how we think about such tasks and see them as an opportunity rather than a hassle. Why does this task have to be done? How does it fit into the big picture and what benefits can you derive from completing it? For me entering data is a crucial task that if done properly can make my job easier in the future and help me to meet my revenue targets.

Second, when can I schedule these tasks, so that I am most profited? Often the tasks that we do not like, don’t require too much mental energy. If you are feeling somewhat drained, then you can work on these tasks to rejuvenate. Before, I was frustrated with data entry because it was boring. Now my point of view is different. After having a challenging meeting, I can do some data entry to calm down a bit and get refocused. What are tasks that you can easily do when your energy is low? Further examples include answering emails, reading an article for further learning, or updating your to-do list. We are all different in this regard, so it is worth while to reflect and schedule accordingly.

9. Increase Your Productivity by Reducing Complexity

Break Down Large Tasks into Sub-tasks

Have you ever received a daunting task and was not sure how to approach it? One of the reasons we may not perform optimally in such situations is we become overwhelmed by complexity. We get paralyzed by thoughts like, “I don’t know where to start” or “This is impossible.” It’s important to break down such challenges into smaller bite-size tasks. Once you do this, the overall target becomes more approachable, your motivation increases, and you feel more confident in your ability to complete each task successfully.

Pareto Principle

According to the pareto principle, about 80% of your results are generated from 20% of your tasks. If possible, spend more time doing the things that bring you the most success. For example, pharmacists normally need to both consult and take care of sales transactions. However, their key competence is giving professional advice about medicine. There is a pharmacy franchise in Germany that changed the workflow, so that their staff did not have to deal with payments. This allowed the pharmacists to see more clients resulting in increased revenues.

If you’re time is tight, which is probably the case for most of us, focus on the 20% of tasks that will bring 80% of your results. This is really what it means to prioritize and be productive.

Automate Things

Whenever you can automate tasks, you will save a ton of time. Furthermore, this frees up mental capacity as there is one less thing to worry about. The possibilities for automation depend on the kind of job you have, but for most jobs there is software – often free of charge – that can make your work life easier. It is worthwhile to do some research or have a talk with the IT department to see what options may be worth investing in.

If you find yourself answering the same kinds of questions or referencing the same materials repeatedly, it is helpful so save this information so that you can access it instantly. This is your personal knowledge management file. I like to use email templates that I can personalize as needed. This saves me close to one hour per day.

Increase Your Productivity by Bundling Tasks

You can reduce complexity by bundling the same or similar tasks and getting these done in one go. Instead of answering emails as they trickle in, set a time to answer them all at once. I like to plan meetings and interviews in one block with some prep time in between.

When you enter your tasks in a calendar, assign each category a different color. This will help you to visualize the distribution of your to-dos so that you can rearrange and bundle as necessary.

You can also bundle tasks based on duration. If you have several things that take 5 to 10 minutes you can do those at one time. In this way you can check a bunch of things off your to-do list in a short period of time.

When you bundle tasks, you in effect free up more time. Think about the time it takes to stop what you are working on, take care of another task and then go back to what you were doing. By bundling tasks, you don’t waste the cognitive / time resources needed for switching.

Rearrage

Another way to reduce complexity is to rearrange inefficient workflows. For example, if everything you do needs to be approved by your manager, you’re probably often frustrated by bottle necks. Managers may give delayed responses as they themselves are often overwhelmed with other tasks – often of higher priority. One way to reduce complexity in this situation would be to suggest an adjustment to the governance process. For example, you could be responsible for making the final decision and consult your manager as needed.

Have you ever experienced putting lots of effort into a project and then having to redo many things after receiving feedback? To avoid such scenarios that require you to “work twice”, you could rearrange your workflow by requesting feedback earlier in the process and more often along the way. This, of course, should not be too often as a full swing in the other direction could also add unneeded complexity.

The essence of this point is to clear up bottle necks so that you can work as freely as possible without unnecessary frustrations.

Increase Your Productivity by Eliminating Tasks

You’re probably responsible for some tasks that you should not actually be doing. These may be things that you were assigned in past, but they’re no longer relevant to your position. Or maybe you were too quick to say yes to something and now realize it’s taking a lot more time than you thought. Such situations often go unnoticed by others, but you feel the negative impact on your productivity. Find a way to delegate such tasks or have them reassigned.

When my workload is excessive, it takes me a lot longer to successfully fill a vacancy. In such cases I’ve talked with my manager about reducing the load or getting additional support.

Modularize

What things have you or your colleagues worked on that you can use for other tasks? For example, if you developed content to pitch your product, this same material can be slightly adjusted and published in the company B2B or B2C newsletter for more reach. There is no need to create your own newsletter or ask the digital marketing team to develop new content.

If you need to give a presentation, try to take advantage of material that has already been compiled. In one presentation I had to give an overview of the pharmacy labor market in Germany. My manager already collected statistics on this subject the year before. I didn’t need to do extensive research, rather I used what was already there and updated it.

Take advantage of available resources – you do not always have to be “original”. The possibilities for modularization are numerous, so always look for opportunities to “kill two birds with one stone”.

Summary

In this post I covered the next 4 of my top 23 productivity tips. You can increase your productivity by:

• Just starting
• Managing your energy
• Seeing the opportunity in repetitive tasks
• Reducing complexity

My goal is NOT to help you fit more things into an already busy work schedule. When you increase your productivity, you are more likely to:

• Avoid wasting valuable time and energy
• Reduce unnecessary stress
• Reach your goals
• Be more satisfied at work

I will keep the productivity tips coming. You can already begin to apply these and feel instant results. Read my next article for 7 more of my top 23 productivity tips.

Resources

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210507-why-we-glorify-the-cult-of-burnout-and-overwork

Huang, S., Jin, L., & Zhang, Y. (2017). Step by step: Sub-goals as a source of motivation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 141, 1-15.

Ranganathan, Aruna, 2020. “When the Tasks Line Up: How the Nature of Supplementary Tasks Affects Worker Productivity,” Research Papers 3738, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.

https://www.stratechi.com/complexity-reduction/