10 Habits You Need To Ditch To Become Productive

In order to face the stiffening competition in our work life, we need to keep ourselves update with the changes and keep our efficiency improving.

We need to prove ourselves productive in all spheres of life so that we don’t get stagnant at any point of time. By being productive always, we keep our minds active and we try to be more creative in our approach.

Just by our style of working, people can gauge if we are productive or not. We focus so much on staying ahead in the race of achieving success that we are least bothered about the habits that are actually posing a hurdle in being productive. It is said that first we form our habits and then the habits form us. But if you don’t conquer your bad habits then eventually they will conquer you.

While you are busy in augmenting your productivity by inculcating good habits, take time for analysing what are the bad habits that are hindering your productivity. It is certainly not easy to have such a deep analysis of yourself when you are actually accustomed to your habits.

So if you want to have a positive growth in your productivity quotient, then read these 10 habits you need to ditch to become productive:

1. Spending Huge Chunk Of Time On Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are a boon to people who love to stay connected with friends, family and other people. Chatting, posting updates, sharing pictures, etc is a lot of fun sometimes and enables you to know what is happening in your friends’ lives. But we unintentionally spend a lot of time in checking the updates and in scrolling page after page, that we get ourselves stuck on the internet for hours.

While working in office, many people utilise their spare time in checking messages or other notifications and they end up engrossing themselves completely on the social sites. If the ping from social networking sites poke you often at workplace, then you will be least attentive at your work and you will get less productive. You need to either switch off the internet on your smartphones or stop the notifications from beeping on your phones to keep your focus on your work and thereby, enhance your productivity.

2. Not Exercising Regularly

The modern life has made life so busy that you find it very difficult to spare time for working out. Actually, it is the laziness that is stopping you from exercising. You need to take just half an hour a day for maintaining your health by either jogging in the morning or going for an evening walk. You must try to wake up early and hit the gym or do yoga at home. You must start meditating for improving your concentration.

If you are among those who don’t exercise regularly, then compare yourself with people who work out. You will surely find them fitter and with more vigour because they relieve the stress stored in their mind and body muscles through proper exercise. They also are much more focused and productive at workplace.

3. Multitasking When You Actually Can’t Figure Out How

You may take pride in telling others that you believe in multi-tasking for raising your productivity level. But you may have not noticed that you may not be performing multiple tasks with optimum efficiency. You may follow the route of the successful people who believe in multi-tasking. But you must know that they are experts in performing it. Many times, you may take up multiple work and may end up messing all of them just because you could not concentrate on each job and you were not able to give 100 percent to each task.

You need to know that multi-tasking requires proper training of the mind. You must practise multi-tasking by combining small tasks initially and of different nature. You need to combine two tasks, where one requires you to be physically involved and other requires you to be mentally involved. If you start multi-tasking at home by combining petty tasks, then you will prowess in the art of multi-tasking. Till then, keep your mind focused on one job at a time.

4. Watching Television Before Sleeping

After coming home from office, you feel that watching television is the best way to relax your mind and body. But you don’t even realise how much time has passed and you develop the habit of sleeping late. In fact, watching television before sleeping can thereby, make you feel more exhausted and you will not sleep adequately. Inadequate sleep will bring down your energy levels and your productivity will decline steeply.

Another side effect of watching television before sleeping is that it triggers negativity in mind. Lately, television has become that largest source of negativity because most television shows manifest crimes, murders, rapes, terror attacks along with endless political debates that affects our mind set in a negative manner. Instead of reading a positive and motivational book if you prefer watching television, then your mind will focus more on negativity and your productivity will gradually see a downfall.

Recommended: 8 Ways Productive People Are Different From Busy People

5. Unnecessary Obsession For Perfection

Some people are too dedicated for their work that they want their work to be perfect. They have a zeal of attaining perfection in every task they perform. They are mostly not satisfied with the way they do the task that at the end of the day, they have all the work in pending state. They have a stressed up mind and they waste a lot of time in re-analysing the work from all perspectives.

They focus on tiny details to such an extent that they keep their mind engaged in completing unimportant tasks. In this manner, they waste their time in scoring perfection and in the process, their productivity declines and they feel more exhausted. It is great to put your vision and undying efforts in your work, but don’t ruin the results as it has impact on many other tasks along with your productivity too.

6. Manage Your Time Wisely

Many people don’t actually have a work plan after they reach their workplace. They don’t even take note of the pending tasks they have in hand and they even don’t know which task is on priority. This is because they don’t manage their time at workplace. They perform their tasks without managing the time and they find themselves short of time for accomplishing the same set of tasks, which another employee completes due to his productivity level. When you know you have stipulated time at the workplace, you need to prepare a list of tasks in the order of priority and set deadlines so that you get motivated to finish them within the deadline. In this way, you can improve your productivity quotient.

7. Striving To Be Productive The Whole Day

It is true that you need to allot time deadlines for your pending tasks, but you can’t be actually productive for the whole day. Being a human, you need to give your mind a respite from the continuous work load. Some people are more productive in the early mornings, while some are during the afternoons and evenings. You need to ascertain the best productive time for yourself to manage your major tasks and organize your schedule in similar way.

8. Not Delegating Tasks

This is the basic problem resulting in falling productivity of people. Many people think that doing all tasks by themselves will save them lot of time and even the efficiency will not be compromised. But this is not true. When you start doing all tasks by yourself, then you will face difficulties in prioritizing them, allotting time for its completion and also you cannot ensure optimum efficacy.

But if you start delegating your tasks, then you can focus more on the major tasks and at the same time you can monitor the delegated tasks and can provide feedback for improvement. In this way, you can save a lot of time and energy along with ensuring that the tasks have been finished with maximum efficiency.

9. Procrastinating Your Tasks

We are mostly lenient with ourselves and strict with others. So when we have lot of tasks, then we postpone performing major tasks on the pretext that we need time to think of accomplishing it creatively for getting best results. But in this process, we waste a lot of time in thinking and thus we make a habit of procrastinating our work. Procrastinating work marks low productivity. Hence, we must focus on the job on the basis of our talent, knowledge and skills while giving our 100 percent to the job.

10. Focusing More On Negativity

While working, you may face difficult situations which will test your patience level. At such junctures, you need to stay positive and focus on finding solutions. If you get succumbed to the situation, then you will be unable to handle the pressure of the circumstance and your mind will pay more attention to negative thoughts. Then your negativity will have impact on performance on other tasks too and you may accumulate more and more stress, which may adversely affect your health condition.

To avoid being negative at workplace, try to stay happy and read positive books before sleeping or in the early morning. Pursue your hobbies and eliminate socialising with negative people. If you do this regularly, then you will find yourself strong to handle adverse circumstances at workplace and your productivity will witness a catapult.