By Ike Okosa

Ever wondered how come some people you admire are able to accomplish so much within short time periods? They keep to the rules and regulations of productivity! Let’s begin on a positive note by pointing out what you should be doing in 2016 to increase your productivity, but keep reading to the end to ensure you see the don’ts and learn to avoid them.

Here are the productivity do’s and don’ts for 2016

DO’S

Organise your time well to make cut off wasted moments that make you feel as though you’re wasting your valuable time or just being idle. It could be very depressing when you realize how much time you’ve wasted especially when you already have plans and goals outlined for 2016.

Develop a routine. Do you still using a regular daily planner? I mean the manual type that you write in? If yes, I strongly recommend you consider moving over to your phone’s calendar! I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you’ve either got an iPhone or some other fancy Android smart phone so you can use one of the many amazing apps available to help manage your routine smoothly. A quick search on Google will reveal a lot of these apps, simply take your pick, install and earn yourself a more productive routine!

Deal with your most boring task first thing in the morning as this is when most peoples’ productivity is at its peak. If for you it’s not in the morning, plan to tackle it at another time of the day according to when YOU are most productive.

Love what you do. Loving what you do makes everything exciting and effortless! What are you doing with your daily? Is it something you are passionate about? As the saying goes, when you love what you do and do what you love, you will never work another day in your life.

Just begin. Occasionally when you have a so much left on your desk to get done, you just don’t know where to start. I know that feeling, everybody has it, even the hyper productive people you envy! Well, scaling such moments is easy! Just pick a single task and begin somewhere. In no time you would find that you’re already on a roll and heading for the finish line.

Take breaks. While tackling the mountain of tasks, be sure to take breaks regularly. Tell yourself you are going to have a 10 to 15 minutes break and at a certain time you’re going to get right back to doing what you were doing or move onto the next task. Breaks are very necessary in reducing mental stress and your creative juices flow like a stream when you take breaks in between your tasks.

DON’TS

Don’t work late into the night. This is one of the worst things you can do because you will know all about it the next day in your lack of motivation to get anything worthwhile done.

Don’t try to do everything on your own. Many top executives try to do everything by themselves, thereby slowing down their productivity. If you’re guilty of this, consider outsourcing some of the easier or more mundane tasks to a virtual assistant or another member of junior staff if you have any, so you can get on with concentrating on the most important tasks.

Don’t multi-task. It is best to stay focused on only one task at a time for the optimal productivity on each one.

Don’t answer every single phone call. Be a little harsher in choosing which calls to answer and which calls to reject during work hours… you don’t need necessarily need to speak to every single person that calls you at the time that they call. Many phones have the functionality to remind you in an hour or so to return the calls you have missed.

Don’t rest on your laurels when it comes to your current skills. Learning to touch type or improve your typing speed will increase the speed at which you do things, as will learning to speed read, for example. Aim to always better yourself and improve on your current skills and this will increase your productivity ten fold.

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