How slowing down and working less hours can make you more productive

You know the feeling of not having enough hours in the day.  Nearly everyone has encountered this at some stage in their life.  You might be stuck in one of these zones for days, weeks, months or even years. Most people believe that putting in more hours will eventually alleviate the workload.  Not only does this not work properly but it also negatively impacts your health.  If you work more than 50 hours per week you are putting yourself at risk of:

• Depression
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Stroke

Usually, when you are overwhelmed and working every possible hour you can, your mind will become heavily cluttered with all of this stress, preventing you from generating new ideas and maximizing your efficiency when attempting to accomplish complex tasks.  

Focus

Instead of frantically jumping from one job to another and half-assing things it is far better to focus on a single task until it is fully completed.  By doing this you will free up even more time to tackle other things (if of course, that task was a one-off project). Let’s take the example of moving house (the most stressful thing to ever exist).  You need to pack all of your belongings and move them to the new house.  This seems easy enough until you actually do it.  So you’ve packed the car 125,789 times and brought things to your new home.  Every conceivable space is now filled with boxes of crap that needs to be unpacked, sorted, organized and put away.  What do you do?  If you are like almost everyone on the planet you sit down on one of the boxes and enjoy a nice relaxing cup of coffee (or tea) and just forget about this mind-boggling amount of work, just for 5 minutes.  Eventually, you realize that you’ve already had a hectic day so you decide to unpack in the morning.  6 months later you finally unpack the last box. A much better method is to categorize this mammoth task into a series of tiny tasks.  Go through all boxes and move every single kitchen utensil into the kitchen.  Now clean and put away everything.  If you focus on this single task it will take a surprisingly small amount of time to complete.  Now the workload has one less room to do.  Use the same technique with every other room and take a well-deserved break in between each room.  You are only allowed to rest between rooms so you better get it done quickly.  

Mind over matter

The stress you experience from a never-ending mountain of work only exists because you have allowed it to exist.  By taking control of your mind you will be able to easily combat these stresses.  This will allow you to easily prioritize your work by allowing you to forget about those tasks that simply don’t matter.  Once you realize this it will become a lot easier for you to take frequent breaks between tasks. The stress you experience only exists because you have allowed it to exist. Click To Tweet  

Sleep

If you frequently work late into the night to get things done you will very quickly go into full burnout mode.  Once you hit this phase your productivity levels will drop to zero and procrastination will eventually become a huge part of your working routine. Make sure you get an appropriate amount of sleep every night (7-9 hours).  During your working day be sure to take frequent breaks.  These breaks can be a reward for completing each task.  Make sure you forget about the insignificant tasks, as they do not serve you.