15 Nov Work Habits to Borrow from Your Boss
CEOs aren’t successful because they got lucky – they worked hard to get where they are by adopting work habits that foster productivity and leave room for growth.
Making any behavior into a habit requires conscious effort at first but will soon become second nature.
Taking cues from successful leaders, adopt some of these key practices and incorporate them into your workday to watch your efficiency take off.
Good Work Habits Meaning Starting the Day Fresh
Rolling out of bed late and sluggishly making your way into the office doesn’t cut it for successful CEOs.
Instead, they get up early and exercise or get caught up on the news. By the time they arrive at the office, they already have a good handle on the day and are off to a productive start.
Coming in fresh lets you dive into work right away instead of waiting until 10 am for your coffee to kick in before you get started.
Scale Back on Meetings
Meetings can be a huge time-drain on your day.
Before you book a meeting, ask yourself if an email conversation will work instead. If not, can you achieve your meeting goals with a phone call?
Only if these other options won’t work should you set a meeting.
When you do meet with clients or colleagues, stick to a tight agenda to stay on track and cover all the bases you need so you can get back to work quickly.
Focus Harder on Fewer Things
You know your to-do list with 75 items on it? Crumple it up and start fresh.
Choose two or three top priorities for each day.
This should be the stuff that you must do or has a deadline that day. Putting the other items aside saves you from staring at a long list and feeling overwhelmed.
When you’re paralyzed by a never-ending list, it makes it difficult to identify what really needs to get done.
Cutting your list down to several critical items gives you crystal clear tasks to focus on so you can drill down, get things done, and leave the rest for another day.
Turn Off Notifications
Every time you start to write that big report that your boss asked for, your email alert chimes.
After you spend 15 minutes dealing with your inbox, you’re about to get to work and your co-worker pings you on your internal messaging system.
Then your phone notifies you that you have a new text from your mom. Sound familiar?
Notifications are a big productivity killer because they constantly derail you from what you were doing.
Chasing notifications creates poor work habits.
Turning them off lets you focus on the task at hand.
Silence your interruptions then check your messages when you’re able to respond.
Take Advantage of Your Peak Times
Maybe you’re not a morning person. Or perhaps the three o’clock slump hits you hard.
Identify when you’re at your best, and when you need a break and structure your day around those times.
If you know that your focus is its sharpest before 10 am, then make a point of getting to the office early so you can bang out a few solid hours of work.
Or if you know that you can’t function at full capacity once four o’clock rolls around, then save the late afternoon for simpler tasks like organizing your workspace or answering emails instead of trying to tackle your most important project.
A few tweaks to how you spend your workday can make all the difference in boosting your productivity, increasing the quality of your work, and helping you to target your focus no matter what you’re doing.
When you adopt CEO-style techniques and make them your own, there’s no limit to what you can achieve and how big your workplace potential can grow.
