If a person likes every working day to be as productive as possible, then he should find out what typical mistakes are made at work in the first 60 minutes. These are the reasons for decreased performance, premature loss of strength and wasted time. How to avoid such mistakes, and what to do to correct their consequences?
Mistakes leading to irrational use of time at work
This group includes seemingly harmless “work moments”:
- Late. It not only shortens the period of maximum performance, but also creates a negative impression among management and colleagues about the employee’s conscientiousness.
- Coffee break too early (between 8 and 9 o'clock). This helps to reduce the production of the hormone that controls the body’s energy generation - consuming caffeine during the first working hour will only make a person dependent on invigorating drinks, but will not have the desired effect.
- Work without a preliminary plan. This is the reason for the deterioration in labor efficiency, which is due to unnecessary waste of time on non-urgent or unimportant tasks.
How to stop fussing, rushing and still being late, read here .
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Most managers understand that a violent reaction with shouting, much less insults and threats, is bad, but it is not always possible to restrain yourself. In difficult moments, a person’s behavioral patterns established in childhood may come into play. If you lash out at a subordinate more than three times in a row, this is no longer an accident, but a pattern. To defeat it, you need conscious work.
To avoid frustration, you can make it a rule not to respond to an error message immediately. It's better to postpone the conversation, especially if you feel tired and irritated.
You shouldn’t completely hide your emotions either - it can only work to your disadvantage. Having made a mistake, a person expects a certain reaction from his superiors. If a manager is told about a failure and he sits stone-faced, it is disheartening and even more frightening. It is better to openly but correctly express your disappointment and invite the employee to think together about how to correct the mistake.
Incorrect planning of tasks for the day
The third mistake – working without a preliminary plan – leads to other mistakes, due to which most of the working time is spent in tension:
- Poor prioritization of work: the simplest tasks are completed at the beginning of the day, and problematic issues are postponed until the second half, when the level of mental energy rushes down.
- Tendency to multitasking and ambitious expectations from working hours: a work unit that simultaneously performs several tasks loses 40% of its productivity potential, and the inability to adequately perceive its capabilities becomes a cause of fear for its professional incompetence, and chronic stress is not far away.
The causes of many problems and mistakes at work often lie in the inability to organize oneself and one’s time. See a selection of the best books on personal time management here .
You are doing someone else's responsibilities
Colleagues regularly dump their responsibilities on you, but you can’t refuse them? Your desire to help others is commendable, but if others are abusing it, it's time to change something. Otherwise, working for others will lead you to depression, burnout, or uncontrollable aggression.
What should I do?
Think about why you cannot refuse others. Do you think that only you can cope with this task, are you sure that you have less to do, or simply do not want people to think badly of you? As a rule, behind our desire to help others is low self-esteem and the desire to increase it by achieving good attitude from others. Therefore, start believing in yourself and your strengths more. Consider what professional resources you have. Then soberly assess the volume of your work tasks and the time you need to complete them efficiently. Well, when you have dealt with the workload, you slowly learn to refuse your colleagues - gently but confidently: “Sorry, I’m glad to help, but now I have an urgent matter,” “Unfortunately, I’m busy,” etc.
How to eliminate the causes of errors at work and correct their consequences?
Mistakes made at work in the first hour have rather unpleasant consequences, negatively affecting not only the employee’s quality of work, but also his image and emotional health. But it is not enough to understand the reasons for these difficulties - you need to know what to do to correct the situation:
- Develop punctuality.
- Break for tea or coffee no earlier than 10-11 am.
- Take time to draw up a plan for the day - after checking the calendar, sort tasks by importance and established deadlines, for maximum productivity, alternate working periods with short breaks for rest.
- Solve the most difficult questions at the beginning of the day, at the peak of mental activity.
- Focus on one task.
- Do not motivate yourself by achieving too ambitious goals - structure a complex task into several smaller ones, concentrate on problems that can be realistically solved in a limited time.
- Do not be distracted during the working period by secondary issues that can wait until the end of the working day.
- Control negative thoughts and emotions, do not allow them to distract you from your planned activities for the day.
- Devote a few minutes in the morning to mindful meditation to avoid burnout , improve mental health, enhance creativity and improve the quality of sleep after a hard day at work.
- Periodically during the day, devote a few minutes to maintain communication, the urgent need for which arises during tense work moments - demonstrating a friendly attitude towards colleagues helps to develop mutual assistance and strengthen productive relationships in the team.
The effectiveness of these recommendations is supported by scientific research and proven by the personal experience of a statistically significant majority of successful people.
Find out here 5 habits of successful people that are worth adopting.
Psychologist Sergei Klyuchnikov
cantrium.com | MySuomi.com | HELSINKI | TourMANN.com
Work plays a huge role for a modern person. A person working in the civil service or in a business structure devotes at least eight hours to the labor process.
The leader, as a rule, is even more. When essentially a third of your life is spent at work, then, of course, a person becomes not indifferent to this area. A modern person has many feelings, thoughts and experiences associated with work, and, consequently, psychological problems .
A person makes certain plans related to work, establishes relationships with people. Despite the fact that the company's employees or members of the work team are neither close nor distant relatives, and the human relationships between them are determined by business subordination, the severity of the experience of conflict and simply difficult situations does not decrease. There's too much at stake.
Human honor and dignity, often trampled upon at work, real and interesting prospects, financial opportunities, career plans, all of the above can easily become a very painful problem for every worker.
All types of psychological problems that a person faces at work can be divided into two large groups:
- The problem of human relationships
- Problems of the work itself, professionalism or skill.
The first group of problems includes the employee’s relationship with the employer (boss), with colleagues, with subordinates, with partners and with clients. Most often these problems manifest themselves as:
- fear (of superiors or a stronger and more conflicted person),
- self-doubt,
- psychological vulnerability,
- inability to position oneself correctly in a team,
- lack of communication,
- conflict,
- inability to correctly understand another person's motivation,
- Difficulty joining a team and becoming a team member.
The second group of problems includes all types of business difficulties that an employee faces as a professional or master of his craft at all stages of his own working career.
Most often, these problems manifest themselves in the form of difficulty choosing a specialty correctly, in accordance with one’s abilities or capabilities, difficulty finding a good place to work, as well as the inability to competently pass an interview and cope with the complexities of the process of performing a work task.
In other cases, this manifests itself in the form of an inability to quickly master new facets of the chosen specialty (retrain) and improve professional skills (qualifications). A person can be hampered by weak skills in effective self-presentation, insufficiently developed skills in selling and promoting one’s work, goods and services, and difficulties in building and successfully promoting one’s own career . As a rule, a person who has realized any of the listed problems in the workplace applies the following strategies to solve them: - ignoring any problems - occasional attempts to cope with any one of the most painful problems using purely external actions without understanding that that behind any serious problem there is a deep-seated negative psychological trait, flaw, or quality. And that solving the problem is a painstaking sum of systemic efforts. - solving problems in some erroneous way. A psychologist or coach consultant can give a person a lot of useful knowledge, skills and abilities related to work issues.
He can give qualified advice on choosing a specialty (both one acquired for the first time, and a secondary one, which involves retraining and additional training).
It can help in developing a long-term personal career scenario, as well as in doing serious work on oneself, aimed at acquiring the necessary career psychological qualities for moving up the career ladder.
A psychologist is also able to help a person structure his behavior more correctly during an interview. He is able to analyze any problematic situation related to relationships at work, and work with a person in order to help him more effectively go through retraining new skills and abilities. As a psychologist, people constantly come to me seeking help to solve one or another work-related problem . Often this desire relates to the sphere of developing and nurturing certain business qualities, without which one cannot survive in the office jungle today.
They often come to develop their skills, to resist pressure from their boss and the manipulation of colleagues, as well as to make the right choice of specialty and place of work, taking into account the crisis and the latest trends in the modern labor market. I am ready to help in solving these problems further.
The main thing is that any person who comes for a consultation does not confuse a psychologist with the head of a recruitment agency and does not place full responsibility for the results of the work on him, but is ready to share this responsibility with a specialist and constantly makes independent personal efforts. In this case, the chances of a successful result will increase many times over.
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Talk about business only
Sometimes we all need to vent. But you just don’t need to discuss personal problems with colleagues while working. This, as already mentioned, is very exhausting, and in this case it also affects productivity.
It is better to set aside time for all conversations during the lunch break or discuss everything at the end of the working day.
Do you realize that you can’t work purposefully due to persistent anxiety? Then it’s better to retire for just a couple of minutes and calm down in silence, creating an atmosphere of relaxation. And then, having recovered a little, return to work. This is better than burdening your colleagues with your worries.
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Determining the essence and causes of the problem
When we define the essence of the problem , we bring clarity to our understanding of the reasons for its occurrence - this gives us a chance to better formulate our goals and develop specific strategies and tactics for the fight.
In advance, when starting to look for options to get out of a difficult situation, you should make sure that the problem is considered from all points of view.
The same care should be taken to identify aspects that cause negative circumstances and ways to eliminate them.
Your physical space is being violated
Do your colleagues constantly take pens from your desk without asking, drink from your mug, or peek at your computer? It's completely normal that it makes you feel uncomfortable or irritated. Any person has the right to demand immunity from others - whether it concerns his body or personal belongings.
What should I do?
If one of your colleagues specifically does this, then you should directly inform him that this behavior of his makes you uncomfortable. If, in principle, it is customary in your office to ignore each other’s personal space, then designate it with specific actions. For example, hide your mug and pens in your bedside tables, lock your computer when curious colleagues approach you, etc.
Outpouring of soul to the authorities
This is a last resort. But if a person has really experienced something that prevents him from working, and all the methods known to him do not help to brush aside annoying thoughts, he needs to talk to his boss. Just explain your situation to him in a humane way. This will really help.
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Bosses will appreciate honesty, because showing sincerity in this form is a very good human quality. Perhaps he will give a few days off or even a vacation. Plus, speaking out is always useful - at least you will be able to get rid of the burden on your soul.
And the boss, in turn, will not have to guess why one of his employees behaves strangely and cannot cope with the tasks assigned to him.
Methods and options to correct the situation
After careful analysis, methods to resolve the problem should be selected. You can involve your employees for this, who already have an idea of eliminating this problem, or begin to select ways of salvation together.
When using the group method, you should not forget to involve people with different views on the situation in thinking about the action plan.
This is necessary in order to look at the current situation from different points of view.
Selecting Actions
You should listen carefully and interestedly to the opinions of all team members.
Show the necessary understanding and willingness to adjust your position based on logical conclusions in accordance with the general concept.
When all the proposals are collected into a single database, the best solution to the problem will appear on the surface.
This will happen after thoroughly researching all proposals and identifying the most effective ones.
Often such a decision can consist of several constructive steps or one radical one.
The main thing is to understand the possible consequences of your actions.
You are being pulled into gossip
Colleagues at lunch actively discussing all those who are not sitting at the same table with you? Is the appearance of your boss's secretary becoming the subject of constant cruel jokes in the group chat? Gossip is a great way to relieve stress and feel comfortable in a group. However, they also have a “dark” side: sooner or later they reach their object, leading to resentment and quarrels. In addition, there is no guarantee that tomorrow you will not find yourself in the center of attention of spiteful critics.
What should I do?
To maintain friendly and smooth relations with everyone in the office, try not to participate in the discussion of others. However, you should not openly declare your position: “Sorry, I don’t gossip.” They may consider you a bore or stop trusting you. Just try to gently shift the topic of conversation to a neutral direction or avoid making value judgments.
