STOP THESE HABITS
Nothing
sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits. They are insidious, creeping
up on you slowly until you don’t even notice the damage they’re causing.
Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative, and
stifle your performance. Getting control of your bad habits is critical, and
not just for productivity’s sake. A University of Minnesota study found that
people who exercise a high degree of self-control tend to be much happier than
those who don’t, both in the moment and in the long run.
“By constant
self-discipline and self-control you can develop greatness of character.”
–Grenville Kleiser
Some bad
habits cause more trouble than others, and the nine that follow are the worst
offenders. Shedding these habits will increase your productivity and allow you
to enjoy the positive mood that comes with increased self-control.
·
IMPULSIVELY SURFING THE INTERNET.
It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a
task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity
called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more
productive than they otherwise would be. When you click out of your work
because you get an itch to check the news, Facebook, a sport’s score, or what
have you, this pulls you out of flow. This means you have to go through another
15 minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and out of
your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without
experiencing flow.
·
PERFECTIONISM.
Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming characters and plot, and they
even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in the book.
They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to
freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t
perfect and what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce
something great if you don’t get started and give your ideas time to evolve?
Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism
perfectly: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”
·
MEETINGS. Meetings
gobble up your precious time like no other. Ultra-productive people avoid
meetings as much as humanly possible. They know that a meeting will drag on
forever if they let it, so when they must have a meeting they inform everyone
at the onset that they’ll stick to the intended schedule. This sets a clear
limit that motivates everyone to be more focused and efficient.
·
RESPONDING TO E-MAILS AS THEY ARRIVE.
Productive people don’t allow their e-mail to be a constant interruption. In
addition to checking their e-mail on a schedule, they take advantage of
features that prioritize messages by sender. They set alerts for their most
important vendors and their best customers, and they save the rest until they
reach a stopping point in their work. Some people even set up an auto responder
that lets senders know when they’ll be checking their e-mail again.
·
HITTING THE SNOOZE BUTTON.
When you sleep, your brain moves through an elaborate series of cycles, the
last of which prepares you to be alert at your wake up time. This is why you’ll
sometimes wake up right before your alarm clock goes off—your brain knows it’s
time to wake up and it’s ready to do so. When you hit the snooze button and
fall back asleep, you lose this alertness and wake up later, tired and groggy.
Worst of all, this grogginess can take hours to wear off. So no matter how
tired you think you are when your alarm clock goes off, force yourself out of
bed if you want to have a productive morning.
·
MULTITASKING.
Multitasking is a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford
University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single
thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded
with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall
information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete
one task at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the
capacity to perform both tasks successfully. But what if some people have a
special gift for multitasking? The Stanford researchers compared groups of
people, based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps
their performance. They found that heavy multitasks—those who multitasked a lot
and felt that it boosted their performance—were actually worse at
multitasking than those who liked to do a single thing at a time. The frequent
multitasks performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their
thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at
switching from one task to another. Ouch!
·
PUTTING OFF TOUGH TASKS.
We have a limited amount of mental energy, and as we exhaust this energy, our
decision-making and productivity decline rapidly. This is called decision
fatigue. When you put off tough tasks till late in the day because they’re
intimidating, you save them for when you’re at your worst. To beat decision
fatigue, you must tackle complex tasks in the morning when your mind is fresh.
·
USING YOUR PHONE, TABLET, OR COMPUTER
IN BED. This is a big one that most people don't even realize
harms their sleep and productivity. Short-wavelength blue light plays an
important role in your mood, energy level, and sleep quality. In the morning,
sunlight contains high concentrations of this blue light. When your eyes are
exposed to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing
hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert. In the afternoon, the sun's
rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to produce melatonin and
start making you sleepy.
By the evening, your brain doesn’t expect any blue light exposure and is very
sensitive to it. Most of our favorite evening devices—laptops, tablets,
televisions, and mobile phones—emit short-wavelength blue light, and in the
case of your laptop, tablet, and phone, they do so brightly and right in your
face. This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your
ability to fall asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do
nod off. As we’ve all experienced, a poor night’s sleep has disastrous effects
upon productivity. The best thing you can do is to avoid these devices after
dinner (television is OK for most people as long as they sit far enough away
from the set).
·
EATING TOO MUCH SUGAR.
Glucose functions as the “gas pedal” for energy in the brain. You need glucose
to concentrate on challenging tasks. With too little glucose, you feel tired,
unfocused, and slow; too much glucose leaves you jittery and unable to
concentrate. Research has shown that the sweet spot is about 25 grams of
glucose. The tricky thing is that you can get these 25 grams of glucose any way
you want, and you’ll feel the same—at least initially. The difference lies in
how long the productivity lasts. Donuts, soda, and other forms of refined sugar
lead to an energy boost that lasts a mere 20 minutes, while oatmeal, brown
rice, and other foods containing complex carbohydrates release their energy
slowly, which enables you to sustain your focus.
Bringing
It All Together
Some of these
habits may seem minor, but they add up. Most amount to a personal choice
between immediate pleasures and lasting ones. After all, the worst habit is losing
track of what really matters to you. Are there any productivity-killing habits
that I missed? Please share them, because I learn just as much from you as you
do from me.
