One of the major problems that businesses struggle with is that their people are not begin productive at work. Jason Fried talks about this is his "Why work doesn't happen at work" TED talk. Like Fried said the problems is that "people go to work, and they're basically trading in their workday for a series of 'work moments'." FULL work PRODUCTIVE days don't exist anymore.
Employees are all over the place. People think that the best way to be PRODUCTIVE is to accomplish as many things as possible. This is why they spend one period working here, then another period working there, and then another period talking to someone. This is NOT getting you PRODUCTIVE. WHY? Every time you are switch tasks you are DECREASING your productivity immensely. Believe me, you are not getting MORE things completed. During this heavy week at BlendZ I've felt I've been all over the place. This is because I had to accomplish so many tasks that I started one, then left it a side, and then started another one, which I never finished, and so on. By shifting tasks I was starting all of them, but I wasn't completing any. However, now that we've established the 30 seconds update I really think about two major goals I want to accomplish in the day, so that I fully focus on that TWO tasks and get them done on time. In order to do so I had to make a list, in asana, of everything that had to be done and then prioritize the most important things according to the coming deadlines.
Another major problem that erodes PRODUCTIVITY at work is INTERRUPTIONS.
DID YOU KNOW THAT IT TAKES 1 MINUTE TO BE DISTRACTED AND 23 MINUTES TO GET BACK ON TASK
Every buzz in your phone, notification, email, and even word from a coworker gets you off task. It's these small interruptions that really HURT your productivity. Imagine yourself working for 25 VERY FOCUSED minutes and a twitter notification ringing your phone. Once you turn your sight off the screen to your phone, you are already distracted by it. Now, it will take you 23 minutes to get into your CONCENTRATION BUBBLE. Now imagine if you weren't distracted by your phone, by now you would have had 48 FULL minutes of productivity instead of only 25. This is one problem we were also having at BlendZ. It wasn't the phones, the internet and the notifications interrupting, but it was all of us interrupting each other. Because we are so dependent on each other for different tasks we constantly need to talk and ask questions. However, we realized that this was affecting the PRODUCTIVITY of not one, but ALL of us. In order to solve this problem we figured that throughout the day we need to have some quiet personal time were we are able to organize ourselves and get ready for the day, no interuptions. This is why Mr. Topf presented the pomodoro technique, a time management method. So every morning, for 25 minutes we don't talk we just look at the things we need to complete, check our asana inbox and get ready for the day. I never knew I could accomplish so much in 25 minutes. The great thing about this method is that after the 25 minutes you can talk so this is the time when you get to ask questions and communicate with your co-workers.
In order to boost your productivity at work and actually working in the office stop trying to multitask and eliminate the distractions. Make these two things part of your culture because if you are the only one who focuses on two tasks and eliminates the distractions your company as a whole won't be productive and your coworkers may interrupt you. So, stop fooling around in twitter and get back on task.
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