10 Excellent Ways To Improve Work Performance
If the only time you think about working on your performance is before the annual performance evaluation, you are not alone. Most of us today prefer to stay quiet and let someone else point out possible improvements in their work. The reason? Well, it’s a simpler choice. However, let’s think about this carefully – you’re talented, you’re productive, you’re good at your job, but how will you grow into it if you are not focusing on improving yourself.
No matter how skilled or productive you are, there’s always a possibility to do a job better than before. Keeping an eye on enhancing your skill set and exploring ways to learn something new is the initial step towards becoming a better version of yourself. It not only helps to increase your work performance but also creates potential opportunities for your professional development.
Considering the importance of constant and never-ending self-improvement, we’ve gathered a few work management tips that will surely go a long way towards boosting your performance and value in the workplace.
10 Ways You Can Improve Your Work Performance Today:
Setting clear milestones is important in both personal and professional life. As human beings, we have a habit of shooting for the stars and the same reflects in the goals we set. Now, it’s ok to be a little bold but when it comes to “goals”, it’s much better to think clearly and be realistic.
Setting goals is often an overwhelming process. So what you need to do is break your big personal and professional projects into smaller chunks and set your goals accordingly. Doing this will help you stay motivated and keep your energy levels up throughout the journey. Further, setting clear goals will make it easier for you to keep track of your progress. Allowing you to celebrate every small victory you achieve. While setting milestones, keep the following tips in mind:
17 Ways to Improve Work Performance and Advance Your Career
For many of us, working from home — whether full-time or part-time — has become the new norm, and with that comes new challenges at work. Between the distractions, interruptions, and the continuous need to maintain an agile mindset, it can become difficult to manage, seek, and commit to new ways to improve work performance.
By not taking the time to identify and improve work performance, you may find yourself experiencing issues like a decline in work quality, communication, and professional development.
Whether you’re new to the workforce, seeking a promotion, or trying to make a career change, learning how to continuously develop yourself professionally should be a standard practice that’s inspiring and challenging in a positive way.
Don’t wait until your annual performance evaluation — or, worse, until your boss brings it up. Here are 17 ways to improve work performance and push yourself to become the best version of yourself at work.
17 ways to improve work performance
1. Set milestones.
It’s okay to be bold when setting goals to improve work performance. The problem is that big projects can become overwhelming. Setting milestones can help you achieve those moonshot goals whether personal, professional, or both.
Setting individual success metrics to analyze your goal is also very helpful to boost morale and energy levels up. Track the progress, allow yourself to enjoy your success (as small as it may be) and share it with your team.
2. Hack your workday with automation.
If you find yourself in a loop of repetitive, time-consuming tasks, take control of your workday with automation. Read our article to learn more about automation and the types of tasks that can be automated, or check out these two ways you can hack your workday and get back time better spent on value-adding work:
3. Plan, organize, and prioritize.
When making your to-do list, be reasonable and achievable. It’s much better to establish realistic goals and overachieve than the opposite. Making a detailed plan in advance is also very useful for identifying which tasks you can postpone for more urgent, valuable tasks, and which ones you can pass off without affecting the result.
After planning, organize your work by breaking down big projects into smaller tasks and establish a due date and priority status for each one. Then, prioritize your work by combining the most urgent and essential tasks, then take into consideration how much time it’ll take to finish each one.
In order to be able to prioritize tasks and manage your to-do list effectively, it’s important to learn how to delegate and say “no” to tasks that may jeopardize your progress. Below is an example of how to practice delegating tasks:
4. Stay focused and avoid distractions.
Workers today are experiencing an increase in distractions and interruptions with a decrease in uninterrupted focus time, leaving much-working overtime with little to show for it.
| How the pandemic affected workers’ productivity, performance, and collaboration |
|---|
| 28.3% experienced difficulty concentrating |
| 5% spent more time in meetings |
| 24% spent more time in 1:1 meetings with their manager |
| 11% saw an increase in fragmented time or blocks of time shorter than two hours |
| 20% reported taking longer to complete tasks |
| 12.4% completely put off challenging work |
The most productive professionals in the world have named distractions as productivity’s number one enemy. Never lose sight of your goals. Every time you feel tempted to check out your Facebook feed or watch your favorite YouTube channels, remember what’s at stake.
5. Learn to manage interruptions.
Whether it’s a Slack chat or your family knocking at your home office door, constant interruptions can cause you to lose focus and waste time you’ve previously allocated to a task, increasing the risk of running late on a deadline.
Let your team (or family) know you need to “unplug”. Communication is the best solution. By simply alerting your team that you’ll be “offline” — or letting family members know when you need quiet time — gives you the ability to focus without going completely off the grid.
Mute your Slack, Google Chat, or Microsoft teams notifications. Whether it’s for 30 minutes or a couple of hours, turning off notifications can help you avoid interruptions. Updating your work status to let your teammates know why you’re temporarily “unplugged” can also help ease nerves around slow response times.
Set meeting hours. If you do your best work in the morning, set your meeting availability to afternoons. Update your working hours so that meetings can only be scheduled within a certain time frame.
6. Avoid multitasking.
Even though it feels like multitasking allows you to accomplish more, it actually does quite the opposite. Whenever you start working at more than one thing at a time, take a step back and determine which task is more important and focus entirely on it. Working on one task at a time makes you faster, less stressed, and less prone to making mistakes.
- Block out distractions — literally. Use a browser extension that allows you to temporarily block work interruptions like browsing social media for a designated period of time. Here are two options to get you focused: Forest and BlockSite.
- Hide your phone. It may be tempting to check your phone throughout the day, so consider hiding it somewhere safe — like a backpack or desk drawer — to avoid the urge to check your phone.
- Turn on work hours. If you need to have your phone nearby (and your phone allows this), turn on work hours. This setting mutes all notifications between a certain timeframe (say, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and only allows updates from your chosen contacts.
- Clean up your work area. A cluttered workspace may make it harder to stay focused. Start your morning routine with a quick sweep of your workspace to “set the tone” for a clear, focused, and organized workday.
- Track your multitasking habits. If you find yourself losing track of time and not sure why, keep a log of every time you become distracted or find yourself multitasking. This will make it easier to recognize distraction triggers or habits and how to work on eliminating them.
Source:
https://www.proofhub.com/articles/tips-to-improve-work-performance
https://www.pipefy.com/blog/ways-to-improve-work-performance/