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#Leadership : #WorkSmart -How to Get Back on Track When you’re Having an Unproductive Day….A Rocky Start Shouldn’t Dictate your Entire Workday. Do These Things to Reverse your Unproductivity.

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If you’re a high achiever, you juggle too many things over the course of a day. And despite your best intentions, you’re bound to have days where you feel burnt out, or just plain unproductive. This can lead to a self-destructive cycle–you beat yourself up for being unfocused, which further distracts you from what needs to be accomplished.

As a small business owner who manages a chronic illness, I’ve dealt with my fair share of days that aren’t as productive as I’d like. Over time, I’ve learned the importance of having a “reset” button–or, in other words, turning around my unproductive day and not letting it go to waste. Often, you know in your gut when you’re not being as focused as you would like. There are, however, also a few signs you can use to identify whether you’re primed for unproductivity:

  • You’re procrastinating, whether that means scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, or doing something you don’t normally enjoy doing, like working out or cleaning your house.
  • You’re staring at a blank document and can’t get yourself to write anything.
  • You had a bad night’s sleep and you’re feeling off or tired.
  • You’re prioritizing other people’s goals and needs rather than your own.
  • You start something–a new project, document, or even an email–and don’t finish it.

You don’t have to write off the day as a lost cause. There are lots of ways to recover your time that don’t involve punishing yourself for being less focused than usual. Instead, these strategies take the reality of the situation into account–you’re tired, distracted, overwhelmed, bored, or a combination of all of the above–and change the tone for the better.

With that in mind, here are my five tips for turning around an unproductive day.

1.PRIORITIZE WHAT NEEDS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED

It’s funny–it’s easy to be unproductive when you have too much to do. Feeling overwhelmed leads to prioritizing inefficiently (or not prioritizing at all), and trying to accomplish too much. When you feel stressed by your to-do list, you’re more likely to mismanage your time or even just give up. If everything is urgent and needs to get done today, you can feel paralyzed.

When this happens, stop. Take a step back and take another look at your to-do list. Identify what items absolutely have to be accomplished that day. Chances are, this whittles down your list significantly, making it feel a lot more manageable. By simply taking some of the pressure off yourself, you’re more able to focus and be productive.

Once you’ve made it through the day, sit down with your list again, and determine what tasks should be a priority for that week. By thinking realistically about your list for the coming days, you set yourself up for days that are more focused and less overwhelming.

Related: This CEO’s one-page list for keeping his priorities straight 

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2. CREATE A PRODUCTIVE AMBIENCE

If you can’t seem to focus, take a look around you. Are you distracted by your environment? And if you’re not distracted, are there ways that you could make your environment more conducive to you being productive?

My ideal environment includes atmospheric music without lyrics, natural light, a light snack, a drink like water or tea, and a comfortable seat. If I have all these elements, I’m much more likely to spend my time productively. I can really zone in and focus on what I’m doing.

Of course, you don’t always have total control over your environment. At the same time, you’re never totally out of control either. If you get unfocused when you’re hungry, make sure you have a supply of snacks on hand. Or, if you crave quiet but work in a busy, loud office with an open floor plan, make sure you’re armed with headphones before you leave the house every day.

Related: These are the weirdest productivity hack that really work

3. CHANGE UP THE SCENERY

Sometimes, you need to refresh your body and mind before you can be productive. When I feel unfocused, I like to change my surroundings. I’ll go for a walk, do yoga, or meditate—anything that gets me out of my chair and stops me from staring at my computer for an hour or so.

You can also change up the scenery by heading to a different place to work, as long as it won’t be distracting. If you usually work well in coffee shops, head to a new one nearby. Or snag an empty conference room at the office for a few hours. Even if you don’t have a lot of flexibility in your schedule, there are ways to tweak the scenery just enough to give you a fresh perspective.

4. LIMIT DISTRACTIONS (SOCIAL MEDIA IN PARTICULAR)

Distractions like social media can easily trainwreck productivity–and unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to pull the plug on them entirely. Luckily, there are lots of ways to limit these distracting factors.

You probably can’t delete your social media accounts (nor do you want to), but you can remove them from your phone. Or, you can put all your social media apps in a folder that’s out of sight. Try hiding your social media apps in a folder with more serious or daunting icons first, like the stocks or your banking apps. That way, you’ll have to think before you start scrolling, and it becomes less automatic.

Many of us rely on social media for work, so we can just log out and ignore it entirely. There’s a great plugin called KillNewsfeed that allows you access to Facebook, but blocks your newsfeed (aka the place where productivity goes to die). You can still do your Facebook-centered work, but you’re not distracted by every photo, update, or ad that you see.

Related: The real reason why you’re distracted has nothing to do with technology 

5. CHECK IN WITH AN ACCOUNTABILITY BUDDY

When we’re unproductive, we often feel shame, despair, and frustration. Even though we know these days happen, we end up dwelling in our negative feelings rather than moving forward.

An accountability buddy is someone who holds no judgments and provides a listening ear. It’s someone you can check in with and give an update on your progress (good or bad). The best part is, when you say your goals out loud, they become a lot more real. There’s someone else to hold you to them. They’re cheering you on and encouraging you when you veer off track.

If you don’t already have an accountability buddy (official or unofficial) in your life, it’s time to find that person. It can be a coworker, an industry colleague, a classmate, or a friend. Whoever it is, remember that the dynamic goes both ways–they support you, and you support them, too.

Most importantly, acknowledge that none of us are productive 100% of the time. It’s not about trying to be perfect. It’s about how you handle an unproductive day when it comes your way.

FastCompany.com | May 31, 2018 | BY HARPER SPERO—CAREER CONTESSA 5 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : 5 Bad Habits That Make Meetings Miserable & Unproductive…Report Found that 67% of Meetings are Considered Unproductive by Executives & They take Up Roughly 15 % of every Institutions Time.

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In 2015 organizations held more than 25 million meetings per day in the United States. This translates to more than $37 billion in lost productivity, according toa study by Fuze. One Harvard Business Review report found that 67 percent of meetings are considered unproductive by executives and they take up roughly 15 percent of every institutions time.

Free- Office Works

As a recent college graduate working at my first full-time job, this calculatorestimates $3,000 of my salary has already gone toward meetings. While some advocate for nixing meetings altogether, we see a lot of tools that help capitalize on that time and money spent. Sticking to an agenda, setting clear goals, sending reading materials in advance are a few items to start the list. Even though many people spend countless hours in meetings every week, meeting time doesn’t have to be money down the drain. I’ve learned a lot and completed numerous team projects as a result of meetings.

But even if meeting organizers use all the tools available, we can still waste time when employees do not conduct themselves well in meetings. As a newbie in the professional world, I’ve had to learn a lot (the hard way) about the flip side of productive meetings: how to be a good meeting attendee. I think the main guiding principle boils down to knowing what to say and when to say it.

 Nevertheless, here are five bad habits we often see in meeting attendees. They each take on a life of their own. I have observed or experienced all of the during my first six months in the professional world.

1. Offline Commenter: We see this trait manifested when people share any comment that would be better made “offline” from the current meeting. It’s easy to over-share because we want our coworkers (and by coworkers I mean our boss) to know how hard we’re working throughout the hum drum of our daily tasks. But there’s nothing worse than wasting everyone’s time with something that should have just been sent to one person in an email.

Offline Comments likely show up during transitional moments in department-wide meetings and sound like this: “I was thinking that the thirteenth graph on page 41 should fade from blue to green because it really captures the essence of the numeric transition happening there,” and “Could you send out that production schedule for me while I’m on vacation next week?” If it pertains to less than three people in the room, one should jot it down and share it later.

 

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2. Interrupter: The most surprising element of my short time in office culture is just how often sophisticated, adult humans interrupt each other. I thought everyone’s parents were like mine, forcing me to stop and realize my error every time I spoke over another person. While my parents were trying to teach me that interrupting is just plain rude (which is still true), this tendency is also an obvious meeting-time-waster because of how many interrupted comments end up needing to be re-said. An interrupter is skilled at convincing office attendees that whatever he has to say cannot wait even one second. This is almost never true. But he is easy to tame. One must simply default to only speaking when others have finished.

3. Brainstormer: If you want to waste a lot of people’s time, send in an untimely Brainstorm. I only know this because of all the evil stares I got the first time I threw out a new, unformed idea at the end of a long meeting. Everyone was gearing up to head back to their desks and finish daily tasks when I said something to the effect of, “Hey guys. What if we did this really cool, time consuming thing that just popped into my head but hasn’t been fleshed out at all. Dear Boss, aren’t I brilliant?”

Brainstormer will try to convince you in the moment that she is more impressive than she is. But the truth is most new ideas aren’t formed enough to be shared with large groups on the spot, and co-workers are not prepared for an unplanned creative discussion. People will tune out while the person entertaining Brainstorm verbally babbles through the rough sketch of a new idea. Ultimately, the time will pass at an unproductive caliber.

Brainstormer is tricky, though, because offices shouldn’t throw this character out completely, unlike some others that need to die forever. Brainstormer brings a timeliness learning curve with her. One has to work with her for a while while before she is ready to be unveiled, and there is an optimal setting for such unveiling: generally in a meeting that has been dedicated solely to this Brainstorm, and one where all the attendees have already been briefed on what is to be Brainstormed.

4. Side Noter: Side Note is a tricky guy because he will drop little clues that make you feel like something you wish to say is more important and relevant than it is. Being able to consistently discern what constitutes a Side Noter comes with the benefits of being a meeting veteran. But it’s not too difficult to catch on. Side noter is similar to Offline Commenter, but carries an aura of false importance because he likely has at least a tangential relationship to something that is already being discussed.

However, the easiest way to lose the attention of half the people in the room is to start a sentence with, “And Just as a side note…” Upon hearing these words, one person will check their watch, another will respond to an email, a third will be whispering to the colleague beside them, and someone will get up to refill their coffee. If something seems to be a Side Note, then it should be shared from its rightful place, which is on the side.

5. Late Starter: It may seem like a no-brainer, but Late Starter still plagues more meetings in the professional world than she should. A Bain and Companyreport says that typically 8 percent of the time and money spent on a meeting is lost when the meeting starts only five minutes late. Late start will whisper to you,just finish sending this last email, the elevator will definitely come quickly, oryou need fill your water bottle and it’s no big deal if you’re a few minutes late.She’s lying, though. The truth she tries to hide from you is that there is almost never a good reason to be late to a meeting.

Late Startr serves only one purpose: rendering those precious beginning minutes as useless. We’ve all been there—the awkward moments when we try to eek out the perfect amount of small talk so as not to launch a too-long conversation, tip-toeing around words that might need to be repeated when the late person arrives, pinging said late person to see when they will show up. And then somehow, like the universe has slowed so that everyone can feel the meaty weight of this wasted time, all three of those things likely took place in only two and a half minutes. And then everyone browses their phone in silence. Precious minutes (and therefore dollars) wasted.

 

Forbes.com | February 14, 2016 | The Berlin School Of Creative Leadership