Ever since the dawn of modern time, maximizing output while minimizing waste is crucial for business success. Two concepts that are often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings are efficiency and productivity. Understanding the difference between them and learning how to obtain a balance is essential for achieving optimal performance at work.
Whether you work from home or at an office, chances are, you’ve noticed how this environment influences your job performance—for better or worse. If you feel prone to chronic stress, fatigue, procrastination, and frequent distractions, your workspace could be to blame and decluttering could be the answer.
As the summer heats are upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, the allure of relaxation and leisure can be overpowering. It can be challenging at times to remain focused on your professional objectives. However, it’s crucial to strike a balance between indulging in the season’s delights, having a healthy dose of summer fun, and staying productive.
In today’s fast-paced digital world, we are constantly bombarded with an overwhelming amount of information. Emails flood our inboxes, instant messages pop out, social media platforms lure us in with endless scrolling, and we find ourselves drowning in a sea of news articles, videos, and advertisements. This phenomenon known as information overload is silently killing our productivity.
Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, your productivity levels will ebb and flow throughout the day. Some people are alert and ready as soon as the day starts while others do their best work in the evening. However, there’s a window of time that is almost universally unproductive—the late afternoon slump.
Most of us can agree that teamwork is more than just a buzzword, it is a cornerstone of success in business. Harness teamwork and this team-oriented approach will ensure that everybody is working in sync, driving innovation, and improving overall performance. Still, we might not realize just how beneficial it is for problem-solving, communication, decision-making, innovation, organizational efficiency, and overall performance.
If you’ve heard of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), you might associate it with those dark, cold winter months. However, while less common, SAD can occur in the spring as well, with symptoms like restlessness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, agitation or limited attention span. Also known by its more colloquial name, spring fever, this form of SAD can pose a threat to your concentration and productivity at work.
Over the past few years, burnout has become a major topic of conversation—especially in the wake of COVID-19 as chronic stress, overwhelm, and exhaustion reached alarming new levels. But there’s another less talked about phenomenon that could be even more detrimental to your work performance (and other facets of your life, too). This silent saboteur is called rust-out, and almost 70 percent of employees have dealt with it.
The calendar has transitioned from that chaotic holiday rush in December to an exciting fresh start in January. Now is the time to reset your focus on performance goals. Fortunately, with winter in full force across the Northern Hemisphere, it’s easier than you might think to harness mental energy, alertness, concentration, and other executive functions during this time of year. Yes, the cold winter can actually help!
Efficient workflow leads to a successful performance and higher bottom line. It doesn’t matter your industry, organization, or team culture. And yet, research shows that only 60 percent (or less) of the average employee’s time is productive. Not to mention, employees face about 56 interruptions each day, which can take them as long as two hours to recover from. There is a lot of inconsistency that could drive to less-than-desired results.
