Path to increasing productivity at work, school, and home

Your boss assigns you an assignment due at the end of the week, while you could sit down and break it up into daily sections which you could complete one after another each day why not just wait and do it all on Friday? This is called procrastination. Procrastination is defined as the act of delaying or postponing something and it might be the cause of all of your long nights working on the final due date of a project or activity. 

The first step to creating a productive work session is removing immediate distractions. These distractions could include anything from personal devices to the noise created by others, or even closing the shades to filter out the distracting bird pecking at your window. 

After successfully ridding your workspace of distractions, one of the following steps is brainstorming the material you wish to complete in this session. This material should then be broken up into manageable pieces which you can accomplish in thirty minutes to an hour. Sticking to a routine of completing one of these pieces and taking a short break afterward should make sure that you can complete the work you wished to complete without becoming unmotivated or losing focus.

Another important step in making sure you remain productive is giving yourself rewards. When you have finished one of the pieces of the task you should give yourself some sort of reward, be that five minutes of scrolling on your phone, or even something as simple as refilling your cup of tea. Small rewards such as these will in the long run create mental connections between being productive and a surge in dopamine. These connections will then make it easier to eliminate distractions and increase your productivity as your brain will be motivated to continue working by the anticipation of a dopamine hit. 

Finally, we must talk about what you can do in advance to make sure that you can have as productive a work session as can be. A crucial step that can be taken in advance to help boost your productivity is getting enough sleep. Not getting enough sleep can lead to it becoming difficult to concentrate and complete tasks. When our bodies lack sleep the normal functioning of our brains slows down in an event called neuronal tiredness. Other than the aforementioned negative impacts on your productivity a lack of sleep can also cause significant health concerns in your daily lives.

The next time you find yourself struggling to make progress on a task, try following these practical steps in order to boost your overall productivity allowing you to complete necessary tasks in less time. A more productive approach to your work will allow you to get more things accomplished as well as free up additional time in your daily life.