What kills your productivity?
There’s only one thing that really kills my productivity, or at least reduces it. Tiredness. I don’t mean being a title tired, most of us learn to deal with that on a daily basis, especially parents.
I’m talking about proper tiredness, the kind that results from several nights of poor or too little sleep.
Today is one of those days for me. I couldn’t sleep last night and, as a result, I am absolutely knackered today. When I’m this tired I find it difficult to get motivated and certainly very hard to be very productive. My mood suffers too, if I’m honest. I am less tolerant of things, more irritable.
Over the years I have learned that if I don’t get 7+ hours of sleep a night I eventually hit a point like today where I am very tired and fall asleep within minutes of sitting down. I can go a couple of nights with less sleep but that’s about my limit.
It’s another good case for more flexible working and particularly home working!
What kills your productivity?
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Yep, I agree with that. In fact I am having a day like that today, very early night tonight might fix it.
You did have enough energy to write a blog post though!
Yes but I shall pay dearly for it come 4pm when I fall asleep on the sofa….. hang on, that actually sounds like a good idea 🙂
I can go for a couple of weeks on limited sleep and then all hell breaks out and I end up taking an age to get home from work because I have to stop for a life saving snooze! I’m sure my productivity declines in proportion over the amount of time that I deprive myself of sleep but as it’s only work…meh!
It does however beggar belief how high end, connected, IT savvy employers only feel that they are getting their moneys worth out of their their staff – with laptop’s, mobiles. iPad’s and remote working capability – if they are seen to be in the office 9 to 5!
What kills my productivity is constant interruptions! We have a small team and are a community centre. I share an office and even if I close the door people still come in and interrupt. As well as that we have activities going on in the centre some of which can be very noisy! I have to write quite a lot of funding bids which takes time and needs proper concentration which is not possible a lot of the time. Working from home would help but unfortunately because we are open to the public during office hours and we are a small staff team I have to be here a lot to deal with issues that come up and people who come in. Not sure what the answer is!
Yeah you don’t have a lot of choice really Vicki. Most office based roles have a fair amount of interruptions throughout the day but it sounds like you have more than your fair share.
I couldn’t work from home exclusively (unfortunately) as I need to be here to discuss directly with developers and designers and I have some hands on product testing to carry out but I could certainly do more than Friday each week.
It’s not always an easy balance, for many reasons. Maybe you should have a big sign made for your door? 🙂