HappyLifestyleJournal
We all get 24 hours in a day, but for some the day seems shorter and less productive. Ever had that day when you feel like you accomplished nothing even though you woke up early and went home late? You keep asking yourself where the time went.
Aside from procrastination, there are other factors that may be killing your productivity whether at work or at home. Employment site CareerBuilder recently surveyed around 2,100 hiring and human resource managers from different industries and company sizes to identify the top productivity killers.
Based on their survey and other studies, we’ve listed 11 productivity killers that may be hurting your day and shared a couple of tips on how to beat them.
1. Meetings
We’ve all had that day where we started and ended with meetings. You had nothing done, your discussions were going in circles, and it seemed like you just wasted your day.
On average, a meeting would last 1-2 hours. If you are going to spend that much time, there are rules that you should follow to have a productive meeting.
First, make sure you start on time. If you send out an invite for a 10:00am meeting then close the door by 10:00am and start. You are wasting time if you wait for latecomers. It also reinforces their behavior thinking it does not matter if they come five minutes later than appointed. When you send a meeting invite, state your goals clearly. If the meeting involves just a few announcements, it’s better to just send an email regarding the topic than gather everyone and waste everybody’s time.
Keep your agenda short and plan how long the meeting should last. You can even set a timer to keep you on track. This will avoid turning the meeting into a social gathering.
As for attendees, keep the gathering small. Meetings are productive if there are five to seven people in the group. A bigger one would result to several people discussing, while other attendees would just become mere spectators. Skip the laptops and only have notepads and pens. End your meeting with actionable tasks for each individual.
Meetings, if done right, can actually increase one’s productivity rather than kill it.
