3 Overlooked Ways to Improve Work Performance

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After sleeping, time spent eating, and hours dedicated to exercise and personal hygiene, we have only so many hours in a day to work and spend time with our loved ones. Do you feel like you’re constantly trying to stay one step ahead of your workday so that you can grow your business? You’re not the only one. Nearly every entrepreneur is on the hunt for the best productivity hacks.

In this article, we’ll share some important and unconventional tips for getting the most out of your working hours so you can make progress without sacrificing your health or your personal life. On the surface, these tips may not seem very useful, but they have the potential to change your life.

1. Take Breaks

It may seem counterintuitive, but taking breaks can help you be more productive during the time you do spend working. When you start to feel tired or distracted during the day, honor those feelings. Stand up, go for a brisk walk, chat with a colleague, or take a power nap.

Having a quick, healthy snack can make all the difference between an afternoon full of energy and one in which you feel drained and unproductive. Try these:

Kale chips
Dark chocolate
Roasted seaweed snacks
A handful of pumpkin seeds or wasabi peas
Yogurt with chia seeds
Hard-boiled eggs
Natural, low-sodium beef jerky

Often, we simply need to get over our guilt about taking breaks to realize that it’s actually the best thing we can do for ourselves. After your break, you’ll feel refreshed and ready to conquer the next task.

2. Forgive Yourself for Not Being a Robot

Entrepreneurs often hold themselves to very high standards and are convinced that they’re not doing their best, even when evidence shows the opposite. Beating yourself up can be counterproductive since you won’t be getting very much done when you’re criticizing yourself. Instead, let go of negative thoughts about your performance, and remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can with the resources you have. If you accept that you can’t and won’t do it all, you’ll get much better at celebrating the small wins.

Learning to delegate is an essential task for any entrepreneur. Even if funds and human resources are short in the early days, figure out how to hire an intern or attract volunteers who have unique and valuable skill sets that are compatible with your company and mission.

Offloading these projects can free you up to do what you do best and what energizes you. In addition, you could learn something from your collaborators!

3. To Improve Your Time Management, Stop Multitasking

You’re probably convinced that multitasking is the only way that you’ll ever get anything done, but the truth is that multitasking is biologically impossible. You may think that you’re able to do more than one thing at once and do them well, but you’re probably not doing any of those things effectively. Instead, you’re just increasing the chances that you’ll make mistakes, which means you’ll have to spend more time fixing those mistakes later.

The good news is that there are many tools that can help with time management. Take a look at these:

I Done This — a flexible 5-minute to-do list to keep you and your team focused
Slack — for communication when you’re remote or on-the-go
Lattice — to help team members develop clear goals, performance reviews, and more
Slab — to keep your product knowledge in a single source

Of course, you can always add FollowUp for a quick, valuable way to help prioritize the flood of emails in your inbox.

Figure Out Your Own Ways to Improve Work Performance

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for creating work-life balance. Every person and business is unique and dynamic and requires a different set of strategies and tools to achieve missions and goals.

By shining a light on your current work habits and trying something outside of your comfort zone, you may be able to get more done during a typical workday — and find more time to spend enjoying your hobbies and spending time with the people you love.