Top 10 Poor Work Habits to Reform

In today's busy digital and office environment, it's not just about working harder, it's about working smarter. Organizational and industrial psychology has a lot to teach us about time management and what constitutes good work habits. In this age of #remotework, there's a lot we can improve upon by avoiding the following: 

1- Not organizing tasks based upon priority for the day and for the week. 

2- Not being punctual, being punctual should be part of your routine for yourself, for your meetings with others and for your deadlines. This will give you the habit of efficiency and routine, being "on time" will make you in sync with your own time-management optimization practices. 

3- Not knowing how to say "No", you know your role, so don't allow others to inhibit you, sometimes you have to say no to smaller tasks so you can get your major tasks done first. 

4- Communicating too much, say what you have to say and then go and do what you have to do. Adopt tools like Slack, Trello and Asana in your team instead of relying on Email, Excel files and the like. 

5- Never taking breaks. Taking micro breaks to rest your eyes, to walk, to have a drink, is all essential to work with max concentration. Listen to your body and keep in mind that high focus only lasts for 90 minutes, so split your tasks into chunks and take 10-15 breaks in between to get things done in a hurry of high quality. 

6- Being too work focused. It's great to be serious about what you do but lubricate your brain with social time, this will not only improve your subjective well-being and mood but your team work and long lasting bonds with your colleagues will improve leading to better total performance. Learn to cordially mix with others in your team and socialize about work so help motivate you to improve your own performance and see problems in new ways. Bounce ideas off of your colleagues. 

7- Not facing procrastination. If you feel the procrastination bug looming on a particular project, tackle in from different angles, talk about it and or delegate it. Don't delay hard decisions but approach the people involved to try to problem solve it together. 

8- Being device or channel addicted. There are times when you don't need to check your Email, your phone, your social media, your smart watch, or other obvious distractions. Have times in the day where you put these things away and don't follow up on micro temptations. Dare to disconnect, so you can focus on the task at hand. 

9- Letting stress get to you. Don't allow stress to take over, stress is an optimal condition to being engaged and fully invested in a challenge. Don't let stress win, it's just a state of mind. Take time to to unwind, meditate, exercise, be with loved ones and do those little things that enables you to fully manage stress successfully. 

10- Relying on Multi-tasking too much. Some people relish the idea of multi-tasking, however it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully return to a task after interruption, so consider focusing on projects carefully, with minimal diversions of focus on side issues. Quality usually beats quantity. Generally, you can achieve more in less time when you place a single task in front of you.