Although productivity is a term related to the business field, it can be applied to all fields of life. For example, in eCommerce, productivity strategies are measured by the number of online sales generated or the factory line's output. In the academic world, productivity is measured by the number of questions answered or the words written.
In the basic form, productivity is dependent on the input. However, there are cases in which increasing productivity isn't always straightforward if the results are tangible. Certain products and industries (especially if they are new in the environment) require a lot of self-motivation. For example, in the service provider industry, you are going for a promotion or a creative project, such as writing a book. In such cases, your productivity strategy doesn't have much of an influence.
If you want to understand the ways of increasing productivity, you can look into time management techniques. Although both terms have many similarities, productivity and time management are different. People who are good at productivity don't need to be also good at time management.
Time management refers to a range of skills that promote the effective use of a person's time. Productivity is about achieving results in a specific period. Sometimes productive results don't come by managing a list of tasks effectively, and they are more concerned about the outcome.
Best Ways of Implementing Productivity Strategies
1) Stop Multitasking
You are tempted to multitask when you have a huge workload on a particular day. You feel you can fulfill your objectives by joggling numerous daily workday tasks. Although this improves business productivity, it rarely produces the best results.
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Hence, the best approach is to focus on every task individually. This is one of the most important productivity strategies because they improve your results and give you peace of mind. You can seamlessly move on to the next task by focusing on each task individually.
2) Set Small Objectives
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Focusing on the larger tasks or objectives can be intimidating, and you usually overestimate how long they would take to complete. Therefore, the best approach is to build momentum by breaking down tasks into manageable milestones. These bite-sized milestones can be built until your project is complete. For example, you can set the objective of answering four emails daily to clear your inbox.
3) Take Regular Breaks
If you feel you cannot do more, there is nothing wrong with taking a break. Taking breaks is one of the most important productivity strategies because professionals usually ignore them. People assume you cannot take breaks while remaining productive at work simultaneously. Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance, a course from Monash University, has discussed how to improve business productivity by achieving peace of mind in the workplace.
Nowadays, many professionals take regular breaks during their office hours. However, if you work from home or in an office where nobody tracks your productivity, you shouldn't mind taking breaks of 10 to 15 minutes regularly. You can use this time to step away from your professional work. For example, you can have lunch or be involved in a sports activity, such as table tennis (if you have a table in your office). When you return to your working desk after the break, you usually return with renewed optimism and potentially new ideas.
4) The Five-Minute Rule
If you are overwhelmed by procrastination, try the five-minute rule. If you promise to spend five minutes on an outstanding task, you will eradicate all the excuses that stop you from starting. Almost every professional worker can allocate five minutes to write an email, research a topic, or outline a new task.
Usually, the motivation remains once the five minutes are completed. Even if you shift your focus to a new task, the small goals met in a few minutes contribute to your overall output. By prioritizing these small tasks, we can make life easy for ourselves.
5) Time Blocking
Time blocking is one of the best productivity strategies today and is used by many professional workers worldwide. If you create time blocks in your working schedule, you allocate a specific time to a certain task.
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Usually, time blocks are divided into 60 to 90-minute sections. You can print the schedule or symbolize your tasks with color codes. Once your workday schedule involving time blocks is completed, it will give a visual guide.
6) Delegate
If you are part of a team or have online collaboration, you must go through your daily tasks and see if they can be allocated to other team members. Usually, business owners tackle work not associated with any team member and can be done relatively quickly.
Delegation isn't about offloading work that you don't want to do. Instead, it is about ensuring that everyone is in working mode. You must ensure that all tasks taken up by your team members are suited to their skills and availability.
Entrepreneurs tend to multitask and juggle all their business tasks. Delegating tasks to new employees or outsourcing tasks, such as social media content, to professional freelancers means more time is available for higher-priority tasks.
7) Minimize Distractions
Focus doesn't come naturally at your work desk, which is why it is easy to get distracted. However, it is a skill that can be developed with time. If you are a regular social media user, the best practice is to turn your mobile notifications off. Then, you can either switch your mobile to airplane mode or use a productivity app, such as Freedom.
Many entrepreneurs use the Pomodoro technique to prevent distractions and complete their tasks efficiently. Users put a timer, remove all the distractions from their system (social media, emails, mobile games, etc.), and work in full flow for about 20 to 30 minutes. Knowing that you have to focus for a specific period is one of the best productivity strategies, which helps you to focus for more extended periods.
8) Deal With the Hard Tasks First
Many individuals tend to focus on quick wins initially and avoid time-consuming tasks. However, you can increase your motivation levels by first getting rid of difficult projects. Dealing with difficult tasks will help you to maintain focus for the rest of the working hours, which will eventually help you in improving business productivity. Hence, it is better to prioritize the bigger tasks initially or when you feel the most productive.
9) Set Boundaries
As we stated in the delegate point, people usually tackle tasks beyond their role's scope. Hence, despite it being a good thing to be flexible and take opportunities for career development, it is a good approach to set boundaries.
To complete your tasks efficiently, you must complete them in the required timeframe. You will eliminate the overwhelming factor if you set boundaries on your work schedule.
10) Identify What is More Productive
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, the work from home opportunities or remote working has increased. The traditional work shift of 9 to 5 has become less common recently. Flexible working is one of the best productivity strategies and has revolutionized working across all forums.
Every individual wants to improve their productivity. Some entrepreneurs work best in the morning hours, whereas some hit peak form right after lunch. Hence, you must identify what time you are the most productive. Once you have decided, you can set your working schedule accordingly. Making the most of your peak times is an excellent way of increasing productivity.
Build a Professional Website on Strikingly
When discussing increasing productivity, you must have a website that makes life easy. Strikingly is a professional website builder that doesn't just help you in building the website efficiently but also helps you with the technical side of things.
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Once registered on our platform, you can choose a website template and customize it according to your business needs. We provide our users with responsive website templates, which can be accessed by desktop and mobile users. Hence, responsive templates play a vital role in attracting viewers from mobile phones. We understand that nowadays, people are more glued to their mobile screens than their computer screens.
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The best thing about building a website on Strikingly is that you can save a lot of time and shift your focus towards other important things, such as implementing your productivity strategies. You can create an exquisite website design on our platform without writing a single line of code.
The live chat feature allows you to connect directly with your customers. Instead of making your customers wait on a landline, you can allow your customers to submit their queries, and you can respond to them individually.
Conclusion
We often assume you can improve business productivity by getting more daily tasks. However, it is the wrong definition because productivity is about getting things done efficiently. Regardless of what you are working on, there are always a few things that are more important than others.
Productivity strategies are important not just for our workplace but for our daily lives as well. Talking about being productive is about being steady on a few things but fast on everything. If you follow the relevant business productivity strategies, you can reduce stress and maximize your professional objectives.
