We’ve all had bad days at work when we don’t want to do a thing. However, there are those of us that are in the habit of repeating this routine day in and day out. They laze around all day, try to do the bare minimum and just skedaddle.
Certain bad habits lead to this significant drop in productivity. These habits are neither mutually exclusive, nor ethnocentric. They just show up whenever someone decides that their work can take a back seat. Here are 7 bad habits that destroy productivity.
1. Failing to Plan Out Your Day Is Never Productive
While it’s understandable to just jump in and try to get everything done as soon as possible, it’s never efficient. Taking an hour out to plan the work that you need to do piece by piece is always better. Take for example that day when your boss decides to hand you a special priority project. This may require more work, more research, and more energy. However, if you plan to just go about your day as you would normally, you could miss that deadline.
You may say that it’s not a norm in your work life and that may be fair. However, planning out your day is effective even without special assignments. It helps you get done with work earlier. It helps you focus on other things that you want to do with your life.
This could be planning a holiday or working on personal goals. It could even be something work-related that can get you a bonus or a bigger increment. Just as long as you plan, you can get more done and be more efficient. Moreover, you can impress your boss with how productive and efficient you are. That never goes unnoticed in an employee.
2. Lack of Self-Discipline Ruins Productivity
You can make all the plans you want, but failing to achieve them results in a catastrophe. We’ve all made extensive timetables with tight schedules and specific targets, but we hardly ever follow through. That’s common to almost everyone. Sometimes we tend to bite off more than we can chew. You can’t complete 50 life goals in a day. Just make your peace with that. However, if you can’t manage to do your work on time and get through the day, your productivity will go down.
Shirking assignments as they pile up, failing to pay attention to deadlines, and lazing around are all detrimental. Ignoring self-discipline is the core of many work-related as well as personal problems. A lack of self-discipline means a lack of commitment. It means that you can’t make good on your promises. That doesn’t just ruin productivity, but professional relationships throughout your career.
3. Obsessing Too Much Over Insignificant Things Eats Up Time
We’ve all done this. Sometimes we just waste half an hour on a perfectly worded email. I hate to break it to you, but as long you’ve got the punctuation right, the perfect words don’t matter.
You can flip through a thesaurus or look for the best words on Google, but your boss won’t care at all. The same goes for when you’re filling out reports and obsess over every little thing. Just as long as you’re filling out the required information, you’ll be just fine.
It’s a form of procrastination itself; obsessing over small things that don’t matter over major problems. It only results in you waiting until the last second to complete a task.
4. Skipping Meals Drains Energy
According to the California Walnut Commission, two in three Millennials chose to skip lunch to get ahead. This is counterproductive. All it does is drain you of energy. You may think it pushes aside unimportant distractions to accomplish meaningful tasks, but it doesn’t.
Do your body and yourself a favor and don’t skip meals. You’ll get more done on a full stomach than on an empty one. Moreover, you will thank yourself later and won’t hate work in the evenings.
5. Avoid Multi-tasking Like the Plague
You may think that you can listen to a YouTube video, eat lunch and still do your work simultaneously. However, we both know that’s a lie. Also, don’t try to do two things at once at work. If you have two assignments to get to, complete them one by one. Mixing the two will only delay your submissions and it might even decrease the quality of that work.
6. Sleeping In or Starting Late Never Does You Any Favors
Some people think it’s a great idea to come to work and take a nap. Others think it’ll pay off to sleep in, arrive late, and then begin. However, they’re both losing strategies. First, taking a nap at work is a recipe for disaster. You’ll get a late start on work and won’t be able to complete your work to the quality that is desired. Also, what would happen if your boss found out that you’ve been sleeping at work?
Second, if you sleep in and try to arrive late, you may encounter tasks that you’re not ready for. Worse, you may sleep in too late and lose out on the day completely. Hence, get to sleep early and don’t try to half-ass anything.
7. Don’t Waste Time Online
This has to be at the top of habits that waste your time. How many times have you found yourself on Facebook or YouTube, wasting hours and hours? You know what you have to do. Quit the habit before the habit forces you out the door. If you must, carve out a chunk of the day to tend to your social media and video watching needs. Then get to work.
All these habits are huge time wasters and productivity destroyers. If you don’t dispose of them promptly, you may not lose your job, but you will lose that promotion.
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