How to Boost Your Productivity at Work

Employees today endure tremendous pressures and responsibilities in the workplace, which requires high management skills and patience. To successfully manage their tasks and duties, employees need to be armed with perseverance and learning. Furthermore, what makes this even more challenging, they also have to strike a work-life balance. In this article, we provide you with some tips to help relieve stress, ensure comfort, and achieve results with minimal effort in the workplace while improving the quality of your personal life.

01

Prioritize Tasks

Planning & scheduling your tasks is extremely important, as it helps organize your thoughts, prioritize them, set a specific deadline for each task, and finish them on time. Without planning, you will work randomly and messily, and you may forget tasks or procrastinate them. A useful tool in this regard is Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix to prioritize tasks, as he explained in his book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". This tool will help you categorize tasks as important, non-important, urgent, and non-urgent) as follows:

As you can see in Q2, effective work is non-urgent but critical, effective, and valuable, such as focusing on long-term goals, improvement, development, and learning. When planning your daily and urgent tasks, don't forget the tasks that determine your values and shape your vision.

URGENT NOT URGENT
IMPORTANT
Q1
NECESSITY
  • Crises
  • Emergency Meetings
  • Last-minute deadlines
  • Pressing Problems
Q2
EFFECTIVENESS
  • Proactive Work
  • Important Goals
  • Creative Thinking
  • Learning
NOT IMPORTANT
Q3
DISTRACTION
  • Unnecessary Reports
  • Irrelevant Meetings
  • Unimportant Emails, phone calls, messages, etc.
Q4
WASTE
  • Excessive Relaxation, Television and Internet
  • Avoidance Activities
  • Trivial Work
02

Don't Give Yourself a Burnout

Setting a flexible agenda and trying new things is crucial. However, this should not cause you mental and psychological pressure and dispersion. Plan well, but also learn when to say NO when you can’t. Do not isolate yourself in your corner without letting your manager in about your feelings. As soon as you feel pressure and start losing focus, talk to your manager to reach a proper solution. This can be solved by distributing tasks to the team or rearranging them to allocate enough time and attention to each one, instead of disorganized and lost efforts that affect the employee's mental, psychological, and physical health, and thus lead to poor performance.

03

Learn Something New Every Day

Be knowledgeable about your field and beyond it. Educate yourself to innovate, influence, and come up with new and unique ideas. Take courses to sharpen your skills and learn new things that can be reflected in your work and your life in general. To steer clear of boredom, don't limit yourself to specialized or advanced courses in your field of work, but rather take courses on self-development, time management, dealing with others, leadership, relationship building, and other soft skills. Take interactive courses that include activities, competitions, and practical exercises. Most importantly, practice and apply the skills you learned, as knowledge has no value without application.

04

Always Help Others

When you learn something new, teach it to others. Spread knowledge because that does not only benefit others, but also benefits you, by helping you cement your knowledge and improve your understanding. This also helps you become a leader, a role model, and a source of inspiration and positivity. When you have free time in your hands, help those around you as much as you can with your skills, as this will help you learn and improve your relationship with others. Be the light that shines for others. Organize workshops, awareness sessions, or training programs, or make pamphlets and distribute them to the employees. Whatever the means, what matters is the value you create.

05

Expand Your Network

Relationship building and effective communication are key success factors at work. People cannot be known without speaking and communicating. Do not sit on your desk all day. Instead, get up and greet your colleagues in other departments. Do not miss meetings even if they are not directly related to your work. Always be present, listen to different perspectives, and share your opinions and ideas. Ask about the company's progress, and be informed of its latest developments to indicate your keenness. Participate in the company's events and chat with your colleagues, as such events are a great opportunity to get to know them and build valuable relationships with them outside work.

06

Keep Your Professional and Personal Lives Separated

What happens at home, stays at home. Do not go to work burdened with family problems, and charged with anger, as this may spread negative energy among your colleagues and reflect on their performance. Indeed, team members are affected by one another, especially if you are a leader or a team manager. Take a short leave if necessary until you feel better and then return to work. This will help you maintain your privacy and positivity. Your colleagues need stimulating energy from you to ensure team cohesion and productivity. In return, what happens at work, stays at work. So, do not work on your vacation days or weekends, unless in emergencies or situations that no one else can handle. Just like your job, your family requires your full attention and time.

Let's Reflect!

We all work hard, but is that effort well-placed and timed?