9 bad habits you must break to be more productive

Nothing sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits. They are
insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don't even notice the
damage they're causing.

Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less
creative, and stifle your performance. Getting control of your bad
habits is critical, and not just for productivity's sake. A University of
Minnesota study found that people who exercise a high degree of
self-control tend to be much happier than those who don't, both in
the moment and in the long run.

Some bad habits cause more trouble than others, and the nine that
follow are the worst offenders. Shedding these habits will increase
your productivity and allow you to enjoy the positive mood that
comes with increased self-control.
Impulsively surfing the Internet

It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully
engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of
increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in
flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would
"be. When you click out of your work because you get an itch to
check the news, Facebook, a sport's score, or what have you, this
pulls you out of flow. This means you have to go through another 15
minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and
out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire
day without experiencing flow.

Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming characters and
plot, and they even write page after page that they know they'll

never include in the book. They do this because they know that
ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it's time to
get started because we know that our ideas aren't perfect and what
we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce
something great if you don't get started and give your ideas time to
evolve? Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding
perfectionism perfectly: "You can edit a bad page, but you can't edit
blank page."

Meetings gobble up your precious time like no other. Ultra
productive people avoid meetings as much as humanly possible.
They know that a meeting will drag on forever if they let it, so when
they must have a meeting they inform everyone at the onset that
they'll stick to the intended schedule. This sets a clear limit that
motivates everyone to be more focused and efficient.

Responding to e-mails as they arrive.

Productive people don't allow their e-mail to be a constant
interruption. In addition to checking their e-mail on a schedule, they
take advantage of features that prioritize messages by sender. They
set alerts for their most important vendors and their best
customers, and they save the rest until they reach a stopping point
in their work. Some people even set up an autoresponder that lets
senders know when they'll be checking their e-mail again.

Have you read?

The digital skills gap is widening fast. Here's how to bridge it
It's time to end the stigma around mental health in the workplace
Millions of young people need better job skills. Here's how
businesses can help

Hitting the snooze button.

When you sleep, your brain moves through an elaborate series of
cycles, the last of which prepares you to be alert at your wake up
time. This is why you'll sometimes wake up right before your alarm
clock goes off your brain knows it's time to wake up and it's ready
to do so. When you hit the snooze button and fall back asleep, you
lose this alertness and wake up later, tired and groggy. Worst of all,
this grogginess can take hours to wear off. So no matter how tired
you think you are when your alarm clock goes off, force yourself out
of bed if you want to have a productive morning.

Multitasking is a real productivity killer. Research conducted at
Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive
than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that
people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of
electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or
switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one
task at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain
lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The
Stanford researchers compared groups of people, based on their
tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their
performance. They found that heavy multitaskers--those who
multitasked a lot and felt that it boosted their performance-were
actually worse at multitasking than those who liked to do a single
thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because
they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out
irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one
task to another. Ouch!

Putting off tough tasks.

We have a limited amount of mental energy, and as we exhaust this
energy, our decision-making and productivity decline rapidly. This is
called decision fatigue. When you put off tough tasks till late in the

When you sleep, your brain moves through an elaborate series of
cycles, the last of which prepares you to be alert at your wake up
time. This is why you'll sometimes wake up right before your alarm
clock goes off your brain knows it's time to wake up and it's ready
to do so. When you hit the snooze button and fall back asleep, you
lose this alertness and wake up later, tired and groggy. Worst of all,
this grogginess can take hours to wear off. So no matter how tired
you think you are when your alarm clock goes off, force yourself out
of bed if you want to have a productive morning.

Multitasking is a real productivity killer. Research conducted at
Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive
than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that
people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of
electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or
switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one
task at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain
lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The
Stanford researchers compared groups of people, based on their
tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their
performance. They found that heavy multitaskers--those who
multitasked a lot and felt that it boosted their performance-were
actually worse at multitasking than those who liked to do a single
thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because
they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out
irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one
task to another. Ouch!

Putting off tough tasks.

We have a limited amount of mental energy, and as we exhaust this
energy, our decision-making and productivity decline rapidly. This is
called decision fatigue. When you put off tough tasks till late in the

day because they're intimidating, you save them for when you're at
your worst. To beat decision fatigue, you must tackle complex tasks
in the morning when your mind is fresh

Using your phone, tablet, or computer in bed. This is a big one that
most people don't even realize harms their sleep and productivity
Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood,
energy level, and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains
high concentrations of this blue light. When your eyes are exposed
to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing
hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert. In the afternoon,
the sun's rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to
produce melatonin and start making you sleepy.

By the evening, your brain doesn't expect any blue light exposure
and is very sensitive to it. Most of our favorite evening devices
laptops, tablets, televisions, and mobile phones emit short
wavelength blue light, and in the case of your laptop, tablet, and
phone, they do so brightly and right in your face. This exposure
impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall
asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off.
As we've all experienced, a poor night's sleep has disastrous effects
upon productivity. The best thing you can do is to avoid these
devices after dinner (television is OK for most people as long as
they sit far enough away from the set).

Eating too much sugar.

Glucose functions as the "gas pedal" for energy in the brain. You
need glucose to concentrate on challenging tasks. With too little
glucose, you feel tired, unfocused, and slow; too much glucose
leaves you jittery and unable to concentrate. Research has shown
that the sweet spot is about 25 grams of glucose. The tricky thing is
that you can get these 25 grams of glucose any way you want, and
you'll feel the same at least initially. The difference lies in how long
the productivity lasts. Donuts, soda, and other forms of refined
sugar lead to an energy boost that lasts a mere 20 minutes, while
oatmeal, brown rice, and other foods containing complex
carbohydrates release their energy slowly, which enables you to
sustain your focus.

Bringing it all together

Some of these habits may seem minor, but they add up. Most
amount to a personal choice between immediate pleasures and
lasting once. After all, the worst habit is losing track of what really
matters to you.