An office is a place of distraction from emails, calls, attending to walk-in customers, social media notifications and perhaps noisy colleagues. We are constantly vulnerable to potential time wasters on a daily basis.
To remove distractions as much as possible can have a profound impact on our output, productivity and mental wellbeing in general.
A UC Irvine study revealed that, on average, office workers are interrupted every 11 minutes. And yet it takes around 25 minutes to get back on track.
So, rather than concentrate on your to-do list and what you can do to boost your output, you should also consider how to eliminate distractions too.
Here are tips on how to avoid time wasters at workplace and how to identify them.
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Procrastination
Procrastination they say it’s the thief of time. Sometimes, you find it really hard to focus and you resort to procrastinating the task for another day. To procrastinate only accumulate the stress for another day.
Writing for example, you may find it hard to push your pen over a blank sheet, rather than procrastinate, you can force yourself to write and edit later.
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Stick on info note can be used as a reminder for the task ahead to optimize output.
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Social networks
Smartphones and other similar devices can be a major time wasters. Social media, websites, news and other networks can equally be a great distraction. John Zeratsky, the author of Make Time aptly describe these distractions as ‘’Infinity pools’’ - a source of never ending content that can scroll through and refresh endless.
How to avoid social media distraction
The willpower to solve the issue of distraction from online content and social media networks is not enough. If you find yourself getting distracted from work with social sites, yo can install a distraction blocker app to allow you to focus at work.
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Unending communication and over load email
Communication and collaboration tools are good deal for productivity. Only when they are not. Spending unlimited time responding to emails and messages can make sway you away from other pressing task.
How to cut back the time communication takes out of our work time
It’s practically impossible for us to cut these tools out of our workday but it would make plenty of sense if we limit their use . You can schedule a time to check and respond to notifications when you are less busy on something else.
Managers and senior-level staff can help to cut back the time communication takes out of the work day by setting realistic expectations to respond times, this can be done by not expecting the employee or handler to respond to messages almost immediately.
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Excess Meetings and quick catch ups
Excessive meetings tend to sink huge productive time. This is not to totally rubbish the importance of meeting frequently to analyze policies and measure success viz a viz the invested resources. However, excess of it tends to make it a huge time waster and employees struggles to do a lot of catch-ups before the next gathering.
How to manage the number of meetings you attend
If you have this feeling that the better part of your day is expended on unimportant meeting, it may be time you register your concern to the appropriate authority. You may ask to do calendar audit to ascertain which meeting needs to be attended and the one to let go. For the sake of avoiding catch ups after frequent meetings, you can condense these meetings into one that is well structured, organized and more productive.
In conclusion, human beings are prone to distraction on a daily basis on and off work but we have to take proactive action to reduce them else productivity and results would be at the receiving end.
As humans, it’s natural to get distracted but we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we recognize the sources of distraction and allow it to continue to take over our lives and productivity.
Employ this list to spot how you personally waste time and smash them. The earlier you better to make the best out of time, the more you will become productive at work and in the long run - a better You!
Nwajei Babatunde
Content creator for Vanaplus Group.