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As a freelance consultant, I'm always looking for ways to improve my productivity and beat distractions.
So many distractions, at both internal and external levels, as well as projects and agents, all at once can make my workday simply spiral out of control. So, I became more interested in reading and testing expert ideas, which include the latest discoveries in psychology and neuroscience about how the brain works, how our mental state affects our ability to focus, and also the best ways to align and renew the sources from which we draw our energy. Here are five productivity tips:
1. Divide Your Week:
If your work style allows it, consider dividing your weekly schedule into several categories. For example, my friend schedules her informal meetings with new people only on Friday mornings, as she does not do these meetings on other days, while another colleague of mine devoted Mondays to dealing with administrative matters, as her external work with clients is rarely required on Mondays, so it is the perfect day for her to deal with bills, complaints and other administrative tasks required to run her work smoothly.
You can also designate days when you can accept or not accept appointments, so you can collect and adjust the external tasks and meetings that you must attend and do rather than spreading them out during the week (which is a less effective way).
2. Divide Your Day:
In addition to dividing your week into categories, you may want to take into account your body's natural harmony when organizing your daily work. Neuroscience has shown us that we can focus on any task given to us positively within a period not exceeding 90 minutes after which we lose focus and become ineffective unless we take a break. Productivity expert Tony Schwartz suggests scheduling our 90-minute work into chunks with 20-minute breaks in between. Increasing the pressure on your effort will lead to destructive results, too much effort is the least useful here. In fact, scheduling breaks where you can rest, eat, drink, relax, perhaps take a walk, or something else that can relieve you of your deep focus will allow you to rejuvenate and feel more energetic and focused when you return to your task that requires focus.
3. Control Your Inbox (So It Doesn't Control You):
A recent study indicates that employees spend approximately four hours (half a working day) managing multiple mailboxes, and we have to pay attention to two points we take from this amazing statistic. The first lesson is that you can't pretend that dealing with email is not work because it is part of your daily work that cannot be ruled out. The more we act like it doesn't exist, the more we are drawn to it. Reading and responding to email steals our plans and appointments because we didn't set aside time for this work.
The second lesson is that email can't take up half of our day if we segment it and route it more efficiently. Some suggest checking the mailbox in two designated periods during each working day and committing to avoiding it during the rest of the time. You may need to check it three times a day or maybe for ten minutes at the end of every working hour, choose whatever approach works for you, but you have to be committed and strategic so that it doesn't get out of your control.
4. Stop Doing More Than One Task at a Time:
You've probably heard this before: Multitasking doesn't work, and neuroscience has emphasized the fact that the human brain can't focus on two different things at the same time. When we multitask, we switch our focus from one task to another.
Unfortunately, research indicates that completing each of these tasks and switching between them takes an average of 25% more time compared to concentrating completely on one task alone. Studies also indicate that people who do more than one task at the same time perform worse than people who prefer to focus on one task in terms of cognitive tasks and memory. If you follow the previous three tips, you will definitely avoid making this mistake.
5. Grow Your Creativity In Public Cafes:
A recent study has found that if you want to be more creative in your thinking, expand outside your comfort zone and get new ideas. You may be surprised to know that you will get better results if you go to your local coffee shop instead of sitting in your quiet office. "A medium-noise environment (70dB) compared to a quiet environment (50dB), this medium-noise environment enhances task-completion topics while high level noise (85dB) is detrimental to it." This tip is not for tasks that require complete focus but only for those that require creative thinking and you might classify this type of activity as part of your weekly division.
Conclusion:
The consultant’s life is free from demanding bosses, and this is good news for our sense of independence and freedom, but it is not great in terms of things that limit our productivity, so we rely on ourselves in one way or another, and it is up to us to control our productivity and to take advance steps to create our work schedules and appropriate environments to ensure the best results.
