If you’re someone who feels like they spend a lot of their workday wasting time on things that aren’t really important or don’t have a big impact on the goals you’ve set for yourself, you’ll be glad to know that there are all kinds of things that you can do to help you be more productive and reduce the time that you spend on things that don’t bring value.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for reducing unproductive time in your workday.
Schedule In Breaks
While this might seem counterintuitive, scheduling time during your day to take a break from your work can actually make you more productive.
If there are things about your workday that you’re not wanting to take care of, it’s easy to find ways to avoid that work and waste time on unimportant tasks. But if you know that you have a break coming up and have given yourself permission to do something enjoyable for a short period of time, you’re much more likely to want to buckle down and get some important work done before your break time. By doing this, you give yourself permission to rest while also giving yourself motivation to work.
Commit To Ending Procrastination
Procrastination is something that many people struggle with. And while you might feel like you thrive when you have a deadline looming, you may find that when you give yourself the time necessary to get your work down, you have more freedom during your day.
Something you can try is to do the hardest or most annoying task that you need to get done on any given day as the first thing you do. If you’re able to do this, to commit to stopping your procrastination, you will not only find that you don’t dread your workdays as much, but that you also free yourself up for more creativity and productivity at work with the time you now have available.
Find Ways To Motivate Yourself
One of the reasons that you might feel like you’re not productive at work is because you don’t have the motivation to get things done. And while potentially losing your job or causing some kind of breakdown resulting in downtime at work could be an external motivating factor, being able to motivate yourself in other ways can help you to be much more productive at work.
For some people, simply getting something done and checked off of their to-do list can be motivating. For others, having something to look forward to after they’ve completed a task is motivating. So if you’re needing motivation that you’re not currently feeling, consider what types of things motivate you and then work those kinds of things into your workday.
If you want to have fewer times that feel less productive during your workday, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you accomplish this goal.
