Who doesn’t want to perform better at work?
It improves your confidence, your chances of being promoted, and provides you with more free time to spend on your heart’s desire.
However, when most people need to get more done, they just work more. Problem is, that’s the least effective way to improve performance.
Why? well, according to current research, we can focus on creative tasks for a very limited time, around 4–5 hours.
That means, that out of a tough workday that stretched to fill a whopping 12 hours, more than half of it was spent ineffectively.
Now, some people are going to disagree. “I work nonstop 12 hours a day and achieve much more than I would have working 8 hours, let alone 5”.
They’ll also be right, well.. kind of.
It’s not that when the 5-hour mark is reached, your brain shuts down immediately and you turn into a zombie only capable of watching Netflix and drinking beer, although some of us might find that quite pleasant.
It’s just that you become much less effective, especially when it comes to tasks such as programming, writing, and any other form of work that requires deep thought and creativity.
Here are 5 ideas you can use right now, to skyrocket your performance at work and become a high performance ninja! (well maybe not that last part)
#1 Leverage the 80–20 rule — AKA Pareto’s principle
This is a very powerful idea, which will serve you in all areas of your life.
80% of your results arise from 20% of your effort.
The bottom line here is that some things are more important than others.
Therefore, figuring out what those things are, is crucial.
You might say that 80% is a far cry from being 100% complete, but we live in a world with limited resources. If you have 4–5 hours of high quality focus a day, would you rather spend it and get 20% done, or 80% done?
#2 First Things First
This rule may be trivial, but it’s worth repeating.
Handling the most important thing first, positions you for a more productive day overall.
This is true for two main reasons:
1. Unexpected things happen. And when they do, they’ll knock you down and destroy your plans for that day. How much calmer would you be, knowing that you already tackled the most important task of the day?
2. Remember the 80–20 rule — Most of you are most alert during the beginning of the day. That means that tackling the most important task first thing in the morning is going to produce a better result, faster. Which will increase your entire day’s performance and productivity.
#3 Worst Things First
We tend to procrastinate on tasks that are complicated and hard. Especially so if we hate doing what it takes to complete them.
We all know that feeling. We’ve got something particularly awful/difficult to do, so we keep postponing it to “later”. In the meantime, our mind runs in an endless loop, which gets more and more dizzying, perpetually asking us “what about that task, what about that task?!”. This usually results in a distracted day, in which little gets done, thus making us feel like crap.
Luckily, your willpower is strongest at the beginning of the day, after a (hopefully) good night’s sleep.
Using that reserve of willpower for that complicated/hard/awful task will increase the chances of it being completed. That feeling of success early in the morning, as well as the relief that accompanies it, will skyrocket your entire day’s productivity and sense of wellbeing.
#4 Plan your workday
Another seemingly trivial idea, though common knowledge isn’t always common practice. How many of you actually spend the night before your workday planning how’s it going to look like?
Most of us just start the day and let ourselves be distracted by emails and requests for our attention, leaving us little time to focus on what really matters.
Spending just a few minutes every night, planning the following day, will give us much needed clarity. And with that clarity comes focus, which leads to more productivity and better performance.
#5 Plan your breaks
This one is slightly less trivial.
Some people are terrific at planning out their workday. But they often forget one tiny, yet crucial, fact. They’re humans, not machines.
As humans, we need breaks. More than you might expect. Research indicates that even brief diversions from a task can greatly increase focus.
Problem is, we tend to schedule “back to back” appointments, of either actual meetings or “focus time”, neglecting the fact that it’s unreasonable to be productive for long stretches of time without taking breaks.
Some of us are aware of that problem and set intentions to take breaks. But we all know that those intentions could easily go down the drain when the day gets busy.
So plan your breaks. Plan little breaks during your workday, but also plan bigger breaks at the end of your workday, AKA your free time.
Planning your free time might seem overly strict though, isn’t it supposed to be “free” and unstructured?
Well, from my personal experience, planning what I want to do at the end of my workday, provides two significant benefits.
The first benefit is increased productivity and focus during the workday. When I have something to look forward to, I tend to become more focused on my tasks. This makes sense, as I have a self-imposed “deadline”.
The second benefit is actually enjoying your free time more. When we don’t plan for our free time, we tend to find ourselves with “nothing” to do. Which usually results in defaulting to mindless activities like surfing the internet aimlessly, or scrolling through our favorite social media app. Both of which are not very conducive to our wellbeing.
These 5 concepts have helped me tremendously in my quest for productivity and wellbeing. However, You don’t have to implement them all at once. Pick one and get the ball rolling, you’ll start seeing a difference sooner than you think!
I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts, did you benefit from these ideas? Do you have other ideas you found useful? Let me know in the comments section :)
