These days, perhaps more than ever before, huge numbers of people are highly concerned with maximising productivity to the greatest possible extent on an everyday basis.
When all is said and done, being more productive is something that has the potential to transform the future of your career, while simultaneously increasing the likelihood that you will thrive in a variety of different dimensions of life, at once.
At least, that’s the idea – and it’s certainly true in a number of different domains.
But while using your time at work more efficiently and effectively, and getting more done in less time and to a higher standard, is sure to be good for your career and likely also for your overall sense of well-being – it’s also the case that much of the drive to emphasise productivity at all costs can end up leading people to engage in counterproductive habits.
If you find that you are routinely going to great lengths to try and maximise your productivity and be as busy and high-achieving as possible on a daily basis, there is a reasonable likelihood that you may end up actually undermining your productivity, in addition to your overall health and well-being, due to certain mistaken routines and practices.
Fundamentally, productivity has to rely on being smart and doing the right things, not just trying to grind as much as possible. Just as a craftsman would look for the right tools for the job, such as a glue gun from Glue Guns Direct, so too does productivity need to be handled and approached smartly.
Here are just a number of things you should stop doing in the name of productivity.
Sleeping less than you need to feel rested
For a long time, sleep has been chronically undervalued at virtually every level of society, ranging from the offices of scientists, down to the lifestyle practices of the average individual going about their daily business.
Until fairly recently, it was largely thought the sleep was a pretty inert activity where basically nothing happened at all. And professionals and institutional cultures in fields ranging from the medical profession, to the military, to Silicon Valley and beyond, have all tended to view sleep as a waste of time that could be readily sacrificed in favour of a hefty dose of willpower and grit.
Not too long ago, even Arnold Schwarzenegger was telling people during his public talks to not sleep for more than six hours at night, and that anyone who did sleep for longer than that should “sleep faster.”
Increasingly, though, there is a growing body of research, and a general cultural understanding, that sleep is unbelievably important for health, cognitive function, well-being, emotional regulation, workplace performance, and just about everything else.
Many people, when striving to be as productive as possible, end up sacrificing sleep to squeeze in extra time in the mornings and evenings for work, or personal projects.
You should absolutely stop doing this, to the best of your ability. By sacrificing sleep for productivity, you are ensuring that you will significantly underperform at whatever it is you’re doing by comparison to if you were rested, and you will also experience significantly worse health and well-being at the same time.
Drinking tons of coffee
Going hand-in-hand with skipping sleep in order to boost productivity, caffeine consumption is also intimately connected with the draft to be more productive – especially coffee consumption.
The thing is, it actually does appear to be the case that coffee consumption, and caffeine consumption more generally, may boost productivity. People do appear to be more effective, motivated, and energised under test conditions when they’ve had some caffeine.
Having lots of caffeine, though – and coffee may be especially likely to be an issue here, as it appears to disrupt sleep more than some other caffeine sources such as tea – can end up backfiring over time.
Drinking tons of coffee will elevate your stress hormone levels, make you more reactive and less prone to taking a balanced view on things, and excess consumption of coffee can also lead to jitteriness that makes it difficult to enter into a state of deep focus.
Of course, we also come back to the point about sleep again – as even if you get enough sleep on paper, the quality of your sleep will be heavily impaired if you’re in the habit of drinking a lot of coffee.
Trying to multitask and do a bunch of things at once
The concept of multitasking is intimately connected to the idea of productivity in general – and many people actively pride themselves on their capacity to do several things at once.
Psychological researchers, though, have some bad news for every proud multitasker out there: it appears that no human being can actually do multiple tasks simultaneously, and that what is actually happening is that their minds and attention rapidly switch back and forth, back and forth – and this leads to significantly impaired performance at whatever it is you’re doing, while also generating a lot of stress.
If you care about being as productive as possible, a far better approach would be for you to focus on doing one task at a time with as few distractions as possible. It’s time to consider getting other people to help with the mundane tasks in life so you can concentrate on the tasks you enjoy doing. If housework is taking up your time, hiring services that provide professional carpet cleaning in Philadelphia, PA for example, can help take some of that stress off you.
Ignoring feelings of frustration, burnout and dissatisfaction
In the name of productivity, many people consistently and habitually ignore ongoing feelings of frustration, burnout, and dissatisfaction in their professional lives – and even in their personal lives, too.
Instead of potentially addressing things that need to be addressed, these individuals simply re-dedicate themselves to the “grind” over and over again.
While it’s sometimes necessary to push through when you’re not feeling like it, of course, consistently ignoring these signals that something isn’t right, or that something isn’t in proper alignment, can be very detrimental.
Not only are you significantly more likely to feel happy and motivated in life as a whole if you have a sense of meaning and purpose around your work, but you are also likely to find it easier to be consistently productive under such conditions as well.
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