How to break bad habits that affect your productivity?

People excel in different fields, often recognized for their unique qualities. Whether the work is personal or professional, completing it on time is key to success. To achieve this, it’s crucial to continuously polish your skills, embrace lifelong learning, and break habits that hinder productivity.

The first step to breaking bad habits is identifying them. Many people overlook their distractions, which can unknowingly undermine their productivity. Let’s shed light on some of the most common habits that can be obstacles to efficiency.

To break bad habits stop checking your smartphone while working

This is the problem of this digital era and not just one person. As much as smartphones help you increase your productivity, it’s equally responsible for distracting you. You can’t say ‘no’ because you are a slave of gadgets. So, the trick is to break bad habits.

Don’t be extremely harsh on yourself like switching off your mobile while working. Instead, try taking breaks after regular intervals so that before you crave to check your phone, it’s time to scroll through your notifications officially.

Keeping your phone on silent mode until you finish an assigned task also helps you stay focused. 

It’s often observed that what you see becomes a part of your subconscious and then your personality. When things are kept randomly on your table and look disorganised, you register that scene in your mind and let it happen in your work too. As a part of your working style, you start analysing things always away from their original spaces and not finding the right thing at the right time becomes your favourite distraction.

Instead, make it a habit to take one thing at a time and keep it back first before hopping on to the next thing. When your desk is organised, you see free space in front of you and the same thing registers in your mind. Now your thoughts are sorted and you concentrate on the right thing to finish it on time.

Procrastinating to work on difficult work

It is human nature to push back difficult tasks for later and take up the easy ones before. The psychology behind it is that easy tasks will finish quickly and you’ll save time to do the difficult ones. But, procrastinating to do difficult tasks in the end, we are making them even harder to start them. What is difficult will be difficult no matter when you start. So why not take it up first when you are mentally charged?

Once the difficult task is done, it is coming down the mountain tackling smaller issues and saving time.

You can’t ignore sleep

Sleep deprivation affects your brain functioning and adds to distraction hindering your productivity. There’s no need for any evidence other than yourself. Tell us how you feel after a good night’s sleep and how energetic are you at work. You feel happy and productive as compared to days when you are sleep-deprived due to various reasons and feel low. Work may be huge and deadlines close by but a decent amount of sleep recharges you to help achieve your goals efficiently.

Alarm clocks let you sleep more

How many of you have the habit of snoozing the alarm and actually going to sleep post that? Many of us! If you get up within one ringing of alarm then you are good to go. But the problem arises with the other set of people. Alarm clocks are the main reason to distract you from being productive. Depending on a device to wake you up is a bit tricky. 

Instead, train your brain and body to go to sleep and wake up at the same time. This way you get good sleep and wake up when you feel fresh. Some of the most successful people including Oprah Winfrey train their subconscious mind to wake up daily at the same time. They ditch the alarm clocks to break bad habits.

We have picked up some common bad habits that affect productivity and simple ways to combat them. If you experience some other bad habit, do share it with us along with the solution to break it. 

We look forward to hearing your stories.