There is a saboteur at our workplace that hinders our performance. When you least expect it, bam! You find yourself no longer making progress on your tasks. And you know what the most annoying thing about that saboteur is? Most of the time, it's you! You're checking your email, your WhatsApp, stalking your messenger to track your order, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, and experimenting with new filters on Snapchat...
How many times have you glanced at your mobile phone this morning without a legitimate reason? How much time do your distractions steal from your productivity? Have you become an expert in procrastination? One day, while procrastinating, did you look up what procrastination is and see yourself reflected?
Although previously we already talked about how to avoid procrastination, we want you to commit with us to work when you are working and to disconnect when you are not, that is why we bring you this new post with the biggest detractors of productivity and how to end them. And it is that the more technology we have at our disposal, the more valuable our creativity and ability to concentrate.
This is the top distractions and how to fix them:
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E-Mails:
That clichéd phrase, "the first thing I do when I wake up is think of you," is very true, but only if we're referring to our email. Checking email is typically the first task we tackle in the morning, and refreshing the page is a habit we repeat most frequently. However, this unwavering devotion to our inbox, unless it's our primary task, often hinders our productivity.
Solution: Allocate specific hours for email responses. If you're not anticipating any urgent emails, sticking to designated email response times will allow you to be more focused during the rest of your day. You can also categorize emails to receive only urgent ones.
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Multitask:
We all believe we can handle everything, but when we engage in doing more than one or two things simultaneously, does the outcome match that of concentrating on just one task? Multitasking often leads to working with tension, causing a loss of focus on the most crucial tasks. So, unless you are an octopus with a brilliant mind, it is very challenging to multitask without slowing down performance.
Solution: prioritize. Focus each time on the most important task, the result will be much better and you will not waste more time trying to complete ten things at once.
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Noise:
Working surrounded by your colleagues or in a coworking is great because it promotes collaboration, stimulates our creativity and consolidates the team. But there are times when we need to escape from the noise, from other people's conversations, avoid any spoilers and focus on our task.
Solution: use headphones (without abusing this technique and totally breaking communication with your colleagues). They allow us to continue surrounded by people but in our world with that playlist that motivates us so much. Music enhances concentration and productivity, and it also serves as a signal to others that we are in a focused state and should not be disturbed.
You don't have any playlist? On our Spotify you're spoiled for choice, but we've created a special one to help you focus, on HRider we have everything!
That you don't concentrate with music? On pages like Noisli you can put background sounds, white noise, according to your taste or need. You can choose the sound of rain, leaves, birds, combine them or directly press the "Productivity" button and let yourself go.
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Unnecessary tasks:
A Harvard Business Review research shows that Workers spend 41% of their time on discretionary tasks that provide little satisfaction.
Solution: Get rid of work that does not add value. Through the self-assessment identifies those tasks that it is more convenient to discard or delegate.
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Smartphones:
Our mobile takes the first prize in distraction factors. Mobile phones allow us to be more connected than ever and not be able to disconnect in our spare time, causing our performance to plummet.
Check our social networks or our email releases dopamine, which gives our brain a lot of pleasure, but it is a very frugal pleasure so it asks us to do it very frequently.
Solution: Silence notifications. If you can't silence your phone because you need it for work, you can turn off notifications from those apps that are your brain's great buffet of dopamine.
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Hunger:
A full belly, happy heart (and high-performance productivity). Our brain needs energy to think, create, solve, so a good diet is essential to carry out our work well.
Solution: always have fruit and healthy snacks on hand. This way your brain will have energy and you will not waste time fantasizing about the food that awaits you when you get home.
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Personal calls:
Another major distraction at work. There are calls and calls. It may be necessary to answer one of your mother's calls, but irrelevant calls divert our attention and waste time.
Solution: set your schedule. Your friends and family have to be clear about your work schedule and respect it (especially if you work from home!).
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Smoking breaks:
Giving yourself unlimited smoke breaks is not a good idea. Disconnecting often to smoke reduces productive hours and your hours of life.
Solution: set a number of smoke breaks. Although the real solution is to stop smoking :)
The most effective way to avoid distractions is to plan what tasks we will tackle and when we will address them within our schedule. Furthermore, creating a detailed team calendar can enhance task flow and efficiency. A well-organized schedule allows the team to have more informed discussions about priorities and task assignments.
As you'll notice, we haven't listed our blog among the distractions, even though we acknowledge that it can be quite tempting and divert your attention at times. We have a little trick for this: subscribe to our blog, and you'll receive each newly published post in your inbox, in the email folder for content that can wait but you're eager to read ;)