Forbes Middle East
Forbes Middle East


4 Daily Habits To Increase Your Productivity

Nabeel Ahmad
4 Daily Habits To Increase Your Productivity

Most of us have certain goals and objectives that we are actively striving to achieve. And we all want to accelerate this relentless pursuit and translate our dreams into a reality as quickly as possible.

To ensure your company shines through the stiff competition, it is imperative that you introduce efficiency in your corporate culture. This motivates workers, keeps them focused and greatly improves the overall performance of the firm. On an individual level, being productive means that you can execute a task successfully in minimal time while conserving your resources.

So, how can we maximize our efficiency? Here are 4 daily habits you can practice to increase your productivity.

Set and meet deadlines

Setting and stringently adhering to deadlines is the first step towards achieving your goals. Deadlines enable you to visualize your end goal more clearly and motivate you even further. This enhances performance so you achieve a lot more in a considerably short period of time.

Many experts have come forward in protest of deadlines, claiming that they are the cause of undue stress that can negatively affect both the mental and physical health of a person. However, if this self-imposed stress is induced in moderation, it can work wonders for you.

The first step in setting a manageable deadline is to choose the correct time-limit. For this, you should take into account your own physical limitations and stay true to them. Setting unrealistic deadlines is counterproductive and will do more harm than good. Once you have ascertained your perfect deadline, scheduling it on a calendar to stay organized and in control of the situation. Use a digital timer to stay on track.

Prioritize and organize

When it comes to long term goals or projects, you will often find yourself having to divide the task at hand into several sub-tasks. This makes the whole process more convenient and significantly easier to achieve. However, you might deem certain tasks to be more pressing or important than the rest. This is what prioritizing is essentially all about. Prioritizing allows you to successfully identify the most important tasks at hand, and enables you to commit your entire energy and time to executing it comprehensively.

The most effective way of prioritizing is to first get organized. A cluttered mind or work-space exacerbates the problem and just slows down things. Once you have collected your thoughts and organized your itinerary, the next step is identifying small tasks that move you forward in achieving your end goal instantaneously. Small tasks should be able to be completed in under a day.

Schedule breaks regularly

At first glance, this might come across as counter-intuitive, but it has been proven that scheduling short breaks on a regular basis actually makes you more focused and enhances your performance. The idea behind scheduled breaks is quite simple. They break up the monotony, refresh the mind, circulate the blood and improve your mood. This restores motivation and increases your overall productivity and creativity. Working long hours relentlessly tires you easily and dulls the senses.

Try to incorporate some form of physical exertion in your breaks. This tackles the negative health effects on your body prompted by leading a sedentary lifestyle and improves your general well-being. Even a five-minute walk can be a mood booster and keeps all the adverse health consequences at bay.

Minimize distractions

The final piece of the puzzle is thorough the elimination of any form of distraction or interruption. These take your focus away from the problem at hand and derail you. Interacting with the interruption actively engages your subconscious mind, which disrupts your thought process and renders you inefficient. This also results in you multi-tasking which, in essence, completely undermines all of the aforementioned principles.

Deal with disturbances immediately. It can be as simple as switching on Airplane Mode on your phone, or merely locking yourself in a room to focus on your work.

Nabeel Ahmad is a serial entrepreneur, investor, author and marketing expert. He is the founder and CEO of Vertabyte, a full-service digital media agency.

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