When we arrive at our work station in the morning, there are many things which distract us from performing the tasks at hand. We often start checking emails, visiting social networking site etc and end up wasting a lot of time. Distractions and lack of focus contribute towards lower performance level and the quality of work also goes down.
Many employees are not even aware of the fact that they often waste hours in chatting with coworkers, checking emails and news websites, sending messages on the phone, arranging folders in the computer etc. All these distractions reduce the efficiency of the employee as he or she ends up working to a maximum of 5 hours whereas they stay at work for at least 8 hours or more.
If you are serious about your career and wish to achieve a high level of success at each and every job you have, it is important to know how to avoid distractions to increase your output and perform at your level best. By following some of the golden rules mentioned below, you can make sure that you give your best performance at work and climb the success ladder without any distractions.
Plan Your Each Day:
In order to be successful at working continuously without any distractions, you need to have a plan in place to make sure that all the tasks within each day go smoothly. The best way to do this is to create a list of all the tasks you have to complete the next day, before you leave work. This way you will have a task list on your desk when you arrive at work and can get to the assignments at hand without any delay.
Prioritize:
When you are creating a list of tasks that need to be finished within a given time frame, make sure that you do it in the order of priority so that you can get the tasks done without having to choose the one with higher priority from a random task list.
Allocate Time Slots:
It is best to allocate time slots to given assignments so that you do not end up spending a lot of time on the same task. If you are unable to complete a task within a given time period, leave it and go to the next time which has been listed in the given time slot. You can come back to the left over assignments at the end of the day.
Put Your Phone on Silent:
One of the most distracting things can be the use of mobile phones when at work. You can often get engrossed in reading and relying to text messages and taking personal calls. It is best to put your phone on silent mode so that you do not get distracted with unnecessary messages and calls. You can always check your messages at the end of the day and call back to the people whose calls you missed.
Apply Email Filters:
It is very important to apply all the necessary filters to make sure that you get only the important email in your inbox. Employees often waste a lot of precious time sifting through the email and deleting junk messages. There are many options available which can help you in making sure that you get the email you want to see in your inbox and the rest is filtered out to different folders under specific labels.
Get Your Desk Organized:
Having a messy desk means you cannot find the important documents when you need them and have to waste a lot of time in the process. You can easily get distracted if you start studying some other document which has been on your desk for a long time and you forgot about it. This can throw you off the schedule completely and hence reduce your efficiency level to a great extent.
Take Short Breaks:
It is an acknowledged fact that no one can work for 8 hours straight and needs to take regular breaks. If you schedule 2 to 4 short breaks of 5 to 10 minutes each day and walk away from your desk, it can boost your productivity level to a great extent.
Blocking Out the Noise:
Noise can be very distracting for an employee and often the offices are not as quiet as you would have expected. Since it is not possible to ask all your colleagues to keep their volumes down, the best way is to put on a par of headphone. You do not have to listen to any kind of music as that might be quite distracting as well but putting on headphones with no music on can also block out much of the noise.
Sign Off Messenger:
Staying signed in with any kind of messaging service such as the MSN messenger or IM can be very distracting for your work. If you have to remain signed in as part of your official network, set your IM status to busy to make sure that you are not disturbed by any of your colleagues or coworkers.
Stay Away from Social Networking Websites:
One of the most common reasons why people waste time at work is that they start interacting at popular social networking websites. You might only be signing in for a minute or two but you can get addicted to using the websites for hours which affects your productivity negatively. So when you are at work it is important to make sure that you do not sign in at any social networking website. These activities should be restricted for free time at home only.
Conclusion:
It is very easy to get distracted at work and the over all productivity of each person suffers a lot owing to these distractions. You can make sure that there are no distractions at work by following the useful tips that have been mentioned in the article and increase your productivity to a great level.
Regards
Raheel Ahmed Khan
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