In the past articles, we talked about the methods which help us to increase productivity and efficiency. But there are some simple performance barriers which may lead to losing our productivity. We want to share them with you.
6 performance barriers:
performance barriers 1) Unnecessary communications.
performance barriers 2) Distraction, Interruption, multitasking.
performance barriers 3) You perform the tasks manually, even though they can be done automatically.
performance barriers 4) You make a lot of decisions during the day.
performance barriers 5) You think about change in an all-or-nothing way.
performance barriers 6) You forget how to do tasks that don’t happen too often.
performance barriers 1) Unnecessary communications
The role of clear communication on performance is undeniable, even though too much communication has negative impacts. Research shows that emails and meetings have more effects on performance.
Email:
Using email is so easy, and its content can be copied for lots of people who do not even need it. Furthermore, some of them are not written clearly, so they need further explanation.
Meeting:
• Some meetings can be held over the phone but usually are not.
• Sometimes employees are invited to meetings where their presences are not necessary.
In this situation, even the right people may waste their time by taking part in these kinds of meetings.
performance barriers 2) Distraction, Interruption, multitasking
Although some people think that multitasking increases their performance, research shows more performance is gained by focusing on one task at a time. You should avoid distractions as much as possible and take control of interruptions to focus completely. If you want to be more effective, plan your day, focus on a task, and do it in a quiet place.
performance barriers 3) You perform the tasks manually, even though they can be done automatically.
Getting work done automatically and using technology contribute to decreasing the number of routine works, so managers should know how they can use technology and introduce it to their team and help them to get away from repetitive work.
performance barriers 4) You make a lot of decisions during the day.
Decreasing the number of decision-making prevents you from mental fatigue and increases your willpower.
• Research shows that there is a key factor in successful people’s lives:
They know what they care about.
By knowing what is important to you, you can make correct decisions and gain the important skill of saying NO so that it keeps your energy and concentration on things that are important to you.
To know your values:
Think about the next 20 years.
In 2039, who is with you?
What will you be doing?
• Scientists have a theory which said that:
Even the most energetic people don’t have endless mental energy. With so many decisions to make, it’s inevitable to experience decision fatigue.
When you make lots of small decisions, you lost your energy for making big decisions. This phenomenon is Decision fatigue. Some successful people planned their routine works in a way that it does not necessary to even think about them. You know Steven Jobs always had worn the same clothes.
performance barriers 5) You think about change in an all-or-nothing way.
Sometimes we know a certain habit helps us to improve our performance, but we feel many barriers in the track of doing it. For example:
You know more sleep would help your efficiency, but you know yourself as a night owl so you resist doing it. But you can instead of doing something which you have mental barriers to doing it, do some changes which do not seem that much big:
Decrease the brightness of your house lights, use blue light filters on your devices, etc. In this way, you can go to bed 10-15 minutes earlier. But if you think you should go to bed for example 2 hours earlier, you cannot change anything, so celebrate the simple and easy victories because when you conduct small changes, normally your willingness for big changes will be increased.
performance barriers 6) You forget how to do infrequent tasks.
If you do a task daily, you likely have an efficient process for getting it done. If you do it once or a few times a year, you might not. In these cases, you can have the whole process written in a place where you can refer to it any time that you want.