THINGS THAT WILL MAKE
YOU MORE PRODUCTIVE:
by ERIC BARKER
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/09/6-things-that-will-make-you-more-productive/
You’re only
productive at work three days out of the week:
People work an
average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be
unproductive.
So how can you
improve that?
Get your head right
Mood matters.
Happiness increases productivity and makes you more successful. As Shawn Achor
describes in his book The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive
Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:
…doctors put in
a positive mood before making a diagnosis show almost three times more
intelligence and creativity than doctors in a neutral state, and they make
accurate diagnoses 19 percent faster. Optimistic salespeople outsell their
pessimistic counterparts by 56 percent. Students primed to feel happy before
taking math achievement tests far outperform their neutral peers. It turns out
that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they
are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive.
Proven methods
for increasing happiness are here.
Imagining the
stereotype of someone who excels at what you’re attempting can improve your
performance. And don’t be confident — be overconfident. Overconfidence
increases productivity:
Being
overconfident often gives better results than being objective and rational:
A little
self-deception is one of the keys to optimal performance. In fact, a little
superstition won’t hurt. Someone wishing you luck actually does increase
performance. Good luck charms inspire confidence which improves performance on
a variety of tasks.
Thinking about
what you need to do, is more powerful than envisioning how good it will feel to
be done. Progress motivates you more than anything else. The best methods for
beating procrastination are here.
Stop Multitasking
Your brain was
never designed to multitask well:
We are
biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.
Don’t drink
coffee, listen to music and check your email while trying to write a report.
Use checklists.
What makes for a
good checklist? Be specific and include time estimates.
And sometimes
you don’t need a to-do list, you need a not-to-do-list.
Environment
matters too. Do creative work at home and boring work at the office. A
disorganized mind makes you more creative but a disorganized office makes you
less productive.
Rest
Get enough
sleep:
Keep Getting Better
How do you keep
improving over time? You need feedback. Monitor what you do and what gets
results over time. As Pete Drucker, author of The Effective Executive writes:
The only way to
discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key
decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or
12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations… Practiced
consistently, this simple method will show you within a fairly short period of
time, maybe two or three years, where your strengths lie and this is the most
important thing to know.
http://gerardoneil.blogspot.com.br
No comments:
Post a Comment