5 Deadly Habits Killing Your Productivity Big-Time

Habits comprise of who you are. They play a significant role in making up a great part of your personality. Now, here’s the thing about habits; they can be good and they can be bad. 

While good habits make you more productive in your daily lives; simultaneously bad habits make you non-productive. At first, they may not look like anything serious, but if you sum them all up, you will only find yourself spiraling down. As a result, you will greatly fail in reaching your full potential and you will experience hindrance in your progression.

As Tony Robbins once said, 

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

Since we do understand now how important our habits are and what is its impact on our lives. Let’s see what we can do to give up some of the worst habits so it does not cause any further damage to our productivity. Here are 7 habits that I believe every person should stop right away to prevent productivity relapse. So without further ado, let’s learn about them one by one. 

Negative Self-Talking

If there is one thing which can greatly hurt your productivity, it is to avoid negative self-talking. It’s the worst thing you will do to your self-esteem. If the day isn’t turning out the way you expect it to be, or things aren’t happening the way you perceived them to be, it will eventually lead to negative self-talk.

When was the last time you ever caught yourself thinking, 

“I am a loser and I can’t do it” or “Me, I ‘ll never make it” or “Will I ever change?” 

These are a few examples of negative self-talk. Such talks only lay seed in the back of your mind. Eventually, you will only find yourself question your credibility, talent, and position at the firm. 

Hence, avoid falling straight into the spider-web trap of negative self-talk. Find a clear way to steer away from negative self-talk. Instead, work on thoughts that give a positive boost to self-esteem.  

Unnecessary Rationalizing

Here’s what you do wrong when you rationalize things what you are doing is basically you are lying to yourself. It is the kind of talk that leads you to make unnecessary excuses. It usually happens when a person is trying to avoid getting into complicated conversations. By rationalizing, an individual only ends up wasting his/her time in fulfilling less important tasks at hand or tasks that are irrelevant. 

Unnecessary rationalization can also lead to poor decision making. You can often end up making the wrong choices, even though you know that these choices are totally wrong, you still have to make it. 

In case, if you ever find yourself complaining that you are either getting too frustrated or situations could’ve been different, or you just want to take a break from work, then you’re sort of rationalizing. 

If it hurts your productivity, then I would like to recommend you to drop the ball permanently. 

Indecisiveness 

Certain decisions are hard to make and no one wants to find themselves in a fix of making those decisions. As a leader, being indecisive is the last place you want to be because all your subordinates are looking up to you. Failing to make the wrong choice is one thing, but not making at all shows a weak sign of leadership. If you want to be productive in life, make sure you don’t commit such a sin. 

An effective way to overcome indecisiveness is to set deadlines for all of your important tasks. When you set realistic deadlines for all of your important tasks, it becomes easier for you to make important decisions. Some people such as Maria Popova, the hunter-gatherer reads almost a hundred blogs every day, a 100! Can you imagine the amount of information she absorbs on a daily basis for her blog? 

To her decision making is like on finger-tips, she barely spends time making decisions about what to write. 

Indecision occurs when you to choose between two, 

1) Negative alternatives,

2) Fairly equal opportunities

You often get worried because you are challenged with making a choice and you are too afraid that you don’t make the wrong one. In many cases, you seek to make a choice that turns out as correct.

If you can’t decide what to do then, 

With deadlines, you will eventually find that road as you will have enough time to ponder and the answer will itself come seeking you.  

Dishonesty to Yourself

Dishonesty to oneself is dishonesty to work. If you ever find yourself being dishonest to yourself or to your work, push your courage up a notch. Be decisive and don’t let that happen to yourself. 

If you won’t be honest to yourself, you will relatively end up hurting your productivity. 

One way is to find your solitude by visiting a place where you can quietly meditate. Take ownership of your responsibilities, because nobody can cater them more effectively than you can. 

I am sure the impact of completing them, will weigh far better than the fact of not completing them at all. It reminds me of the great words from Edgar Ellen Poe who once said, 

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to say something which is not everything that should be said.” 

Keep an eye out on the goals and objectives you want to fulfill and make yourself accountable for it. 

Not Consuming Enough Sleep

To work hard is a great attribute that only a few handfuls of individuals possess. It is more of an in-born capability and only nurtures up with non-stop practicing. But, too much of anything is no good. 

If you are working 12-14 hours a day, non-stop, then you need to take a break or you will eventually become less productive. Maybe, you will produce good results in the first two days of your working week, but the remaining days will only turn out to be sour and you will only find yourself sulking badly. 

So, here’s sincere advice to my workaholic people out there, take a break and get some SLEEP! 

Good sleep nurtures the mind and body; if you want to upscale your productivity to the highest level. 

But like I said nothing of too much is good. Here is research performed by StayWell based on 600,000 employees across 66 different states. The study suggests that getting too much sleep or too little can only impair your workplace productivity and create quite a negative impact on the progress. 

So, if that’s the case with you, then I suggest you shouldn’t take that heavy risk.