4 barriers to productivity and how to get around them.
What satisfaction when you did everything you wanted to do at the end of your working day. However, too often we feel that our days are flying by at full speed without having time to do everything we planned.
Productivity, this relationship between the production carried out and the means used to achieve it, is the key to the success of your projects, to reach your goals on time and to measure the efficiency and profitability of a company.
On a daily basis, it is impossible to be 100% productive all the time because our brain is tired and needs to take breaks. However, there are other barriers to productivity. Discover the 4 obstacles to team productivity and the solutions to overcome them.
1. A lack of organization
Good organization is essential to be productive at work. We are talking here about the organization of your working day as well as the organization of your files. Indeed, if you do not know what task you need to work on or if you waste time looking for an email in your email or a document on the server, you lose efficiency and productivity.
The solution
The day before, list the tasks you need to do for the next day. Be realistic, set goals according to your abilities and taking into account the possible emergencies to be treated. For example, schedule between two and four tasks per day depending on their size. And make sure you stick to it.
Remember to prioritize your tasks so that you get the most urgent and important things done first. To distinguish urgent tasks from important tasks, use the Eisenhower matrix.
For the organization of your work documents, there are online platforms on which you can centralize all your files and share them with your team, your customers and your partners. With a project management solution such as Wimi, your files are directly attached to the projects concerned, which allows you to find them very easily.
2. Too many useless meetings
According to a survey conducted by OpinionWay in 2017, the employees interviewed spend an average of 4.5 hours per week in meetings, or 3.4 weeks per year, and up to 6.2 weeks for managers. The worst part is that only 52% of these meetings are productive. The others are therefore time-consuming, ineffective and prevent you from progressing in your work.
The solution
Avoid accepting all meeting invitations. Only attend meetings where your presence is essential. Make sure they have an agenda and are properly prepared and organized (with a start time and an end time).
In your agenda, block work slots during which you cannot be disturbed or invited to a meeting.
Finally, follow these 5 ideas to animate your meetings differently and make them more productive.
3. Distractions of all kinds
Today, there are a multitude of disruptive elements that prevent you from being productive at work. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the distractions that hinder your productivity during the day:
- colleagues who come to ask you a question or simply chat;
- the phone that's ringing all the time;
- sending and receiving emails;
- sending and receiving messages via your personal phone;
- surf the Internet or social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.).
As soon as a notification lets you know about a new message, you tend to stop doing what you're doing to read and respond to the message, even if it's not urgent. So you often stop in the middle of a task and once interrupted, it's more difficult to get back to work.
The solution
To be productive, start by eliminating as many distractions as possible. Turn off all notifications and alerts from your inbox, calendar, etc. Put your personal phone on silent and put it in a drawer, and put your work phone on the answering machine. Close your office door when you need to focus to let colleagues know you don't want to be disturbed.
Regarding access to the Internet and social networks, there are applications like StayFocusd (extension for Google Chrome) and LeechBlock (for FireFox), which allow you to block or limit access to certain websites so that you can focus on your work rather than surfing the Internet.
Finally, give yourself several short breaks during the day to check and respond to your professional emails and personal messages.
4. Poor collaboration
The success of a project is rarely the result of one person, but the collective work of a team. Collaboration is therefore essential for the success of your projects. But good collaboration requires tasks to be distributed fairly between all employees. If the project manager alone does the majority of the work, what do the other team members do? And how can the project manager be efficient and productive when overworked?
The solution
Good collaboration involves sharing responsibilities and tasks. By joining forces, you are more likely to finish the project on time and on budget.
By combining the skills and talents of each collaborator, the team becomes more efficient and more productive. Collaboration promotes the sharing and acquisition of knowledge, but also the taking of initiatives, creativity and innovation.
Use project management software like Wimi to promote collaboration, manage the distribution of tasks between your collaborators, communicate more easily and to visualize the evolution of the project at a glance. It is an essential tool to improve the productivity of your team on a daily basis.
