7 ways to kill your productivity

With the risk of being redundant, i will show you some of the advice i got from Oscar (from growthzer.com)

1. Not planning your day.
You either run your day or the day is running you, there’s no third option. To take full control over your day, you need to plan it out, ideally the night before. Whenever I fail to schedule the tasks I need to complete and activities I want to perform, I’m more likely to make a minimal or even zero progress toward my goals. Writing down works like a kind of a commitment. Furthermore, you know exactly what needs to be done, so you can proceed without wasting the time.

By planning your day, you make yourself a huge favor. It takes me up to 15 minutes to prepare the strategy for the next day, and the results are always outstanding. My willpower levels are higher, I tend to be more disciplined and I work like a productivity freak. However, once I decide to go spontaneously, quite the opposite happens. I wander from task to task, which is ineffective and boring.

2. Allowing potential distractions to interrupt you.

Imagine trying to focus on your work while phone notifications distract you every 5 minutes. And then, there are people asking for your time. To make it even worse, there’s a complete mess in your room, so you are overwhelmed by the chaos.

You may travel all over the world, but you won’t find a person who could be productive in such an environment. For this reason, I always make sure to remove the potential obstacles before I even get to work. My phone is muted, my working space is fresh, clean and minimalistic, people around me know I need to be alone so I can focus. Paying attention to the possible productivity killers around you is incredibly important so never neglect that.

3. Checking Facebook Feed 114523 times a day.

Facebook is one of the biggest time-suckers ever invented. My brain would develop a tendency to want to check Facebook whenever I’d lose my focus. Sometimes, it happened automatically and I wouldn’t even notice until I wasted 20 minutes scrolling my feed to check out useless information. I found a solution which I recommend to anyone who’d like to keep Facebook to communicate with friends but also want to minimize the waste of time.

It’s a chrome extension named News Feed Eradicator for Facebook. Your news feed is replaced with motivational quotes so there’s no longer anything interesting to check.

4. Putting off the toughest task.

As they say, you should eat that frog first which translates to doing the most demanding task at the very beginning so that the rest flows more easily. We tend to postpone the hardest task over and over again so that in reality, we never get it done. If this happens, that’s a huge sign to actually make that thing the highest priority and complete it as soon as possible.

Accomplishing something which you were afraid of doing increases your motivation and discipline levels. Once it’s done you realize that things which seem hard can be easy once you do the first tiny step.

5. Trying to work like a robot.

We love automation because robots don’t insist on having breaks. They can work 24/7 for days, weeks, months or even years. Humans are the exact opposite. We need breaks, plenty of breaks. To reload the energy, to regain focus and to stimulate our minds and bodies. Whenever I try to work like a robot so I can spend more time on the things that need to be done, bad things happen. In reality, I always end up completing less that I planned.

It’s because there’re some rules in nature which we can’t overcome. One of the best ways to boost your productivity is to stop working in order to regain the energy. Take a short walk, perform a 7-minute workout or try to mute the throng of thoughts by meditation.

6. Ignoring your health.

There are certain elements we need to cover on a daily basis to make our bodies serve us well. These are physical activity and eating healthy. If you live a sedentary & lazy lifestyle and put crap into your body, you can’t expect yourself to be productive. Your body is the most precious asset you have, so neglecting it is ALWAYS a bad decision. I know the urge to put off a workout so you could work more on your project or to grab some fast-food so you don’t have to cook yourself. But be aware that it always works against you.

Based on my experience, if you put first things first: you treat your body properly without excuses, then you’ll spend the remaining time much more productive.

7. Neglecting the power of sleep.

People try to cheat their bodies with countless cups of coffee or energy drinks, but that’s a battle you can’t win. Whenever you cut on sleep, you drastically decrease your productivity. Personally, I need 8 hours of sleep to function at a high rate. Whenever I sleep less, the consequences are inevitable and they are always negative. Arranging a sleeping schedule works wonders for your productivity. you’ll be more energized and ready to conquer the day.