Productivity at Work

Staying focused and productive during a work day can sometimes be a challenge. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report, only 30% of the U.S. workforce is fully engaged in their work and as much as 70% of workers are not reaching their full potential.

So, what can you do to stay motivated and productive in the workplace? Take a look at some tips from our team to utilize when focusing becomes a struggle.

Your to-do list will be your best friend

Organization is a main part of staying focused and engaged. Luckily, Teamwork (the project management software we use) does a great job of providing us with detailed information about our projects, due dates and teammates’ schedules and workloads. Some of the other techniques that we use are Post-it notes, online notes (like Evernote), daily and weekly priority lists (like Remember the Milk), Excel sheets, Google docs, categorized file folders, detailed schedules and even hand-written to-do lists.

Additionally, it’s also important to communicate your schedule to your teammates. When your team is aware of what your schedule looks like and what your tasks are within a project, it is much easier to meet deadlines.

Learn when to say no

At Pyxl, we communicate with each other and across offices via Slack. However, Slack notifications can sometimes be distracting when you’re working on a project. Turning off notifications or simply setting yourself “away” on Slack or any other internal communication you use can help increase your productivity.

Other things that can cause distraction include social media, personal emails and your phone — it’s important to know when to stay away from them.

Know when it’s time for a break

Some studies show that the average time an adult can stay focused on the same task is around 20 minutes, so luckily we have the capacity to refocus on the same thing repeatedly. When focusing on what you’re trying to accomplish becomes harder than usual, try going for a walk, taking a 10 minute break and stepping away from your computer, listening to music or having a short conversation with someone around you. Although everyone’s brains work differently, taking a break at the right time will make a difference in your productivity.

Try listening to music

Research has shown that listening to music while completing a clearly defined, repetitive task can be useful. However, when you’re trying to complete a language-based task, such as writing a blog post about an unfamiliar topic, music with lyrics may take away from your focus. Additionally, listening to music that you’re familiar with can be better than listening to new music — when listening to new music, you might be focusing too much on each song, waiting to see what song will come on next and listening closely to the lyrics.

Of course, there isn’t one type of music that is the low productivity cure-all. Everyone has different tastes in music, and some like to listen to certain genres — or no music at all — while working. However, certain types of music can increase productivity — such as classical, but some can also take away from your focus. For the majority of us Pyxlites, loud music with a lot of lyrics is most distracting.

If you work in a large office, you know that it can get pretty loud, depending on how many people are speaking at once. In this case, listening to music through headphones, as opposed to listening to the conversation fragments around you, might help you focus.

Follow these easy tips to stay focused, share what works for you and what doesn’t and remember, “productivity is never an accident!”

Updated: Apr 13, 2022