Are you destroying your work productivity?

So I’ve very nearly finished my first year of Sixth Form, and I’ve done alot of work over the year, but as the 6 weeks holidays approach I looked back on what points I should of been working when in fact I was distracted by various things on my computer or elsewhere, kind of inspired me to create a post on how you could be destroying your work productivity. So take a step back, sit down in that nice comfy chair over there and let Dr James tell you common methods that we are all doing to bring down our work productivity, possibly without even knowing it at all.

Social Networking Sites

A pretty obvious one to be honest, it’s well up there and very distracting, im not too much of a fan of social networking sites but I do use Twitter. I’ll put my hand up to saying I have suddenly just dropped what I was doing and began browsing around on Twitter and reading people’s updates. Facebook is another site that can claim your productivity. Browsing around on peoples profiles and looking at there new photos or status updates, You STALKER. You know your desperate to get onto to Twitter, Facebook or any of them when you find yourself trying to bypass your school or works website filter by using a proxy server.

Instant Messengers

If you use a IM such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger or any type of messenger you are bound to find yourself constantly looking at the window in the bottom right of your screen wondering who it was that just signed on. If you have alot of contacts then you’ll find yourself doing this alot. It’s funny because half the contacts that sign on you barely know or don’t even know at all, yet you find yourself still wondering who it is. The sin of IM’s I guess.

Your Email Inbox

If your a person that likes to have there email inbox constantly in the background then chances are it’s going to distract you when you hear the sound of a new email. Even if it is another email saying you’ve won the Nigerian lottery again. If your a person who has a website that has a public email address for contact then you’ll understand where im coming from. Every email could be a potenial client, or in my case a subscriber, but still it’s distracting. And when your not at your usual computer, you find yourself on Webmail too. Shame on you.

RSS Feeds

If your someone who subscribes to alot of websites that have a RSS feeds, E.g. News blogs, Tutorial sites your almost defiantly going to be presented with a silly number of updates in your RSS reader when you open it each day. Particularly with News blogs, if you see a grabbing headline you are bound to click on it, and in fairness you’ve just played your part in helping the media showing that the headline was good enough for you to be compled to click it, who knew that a system designed to keep everyone updated easily was also stealing your productivity and running away with it.

Web Apps

For the people that are too lazy to log into the standard login area on there Facebook or Twitter account can now use Applications such as TweetDeck and Digsby, with these applications you’ll be able to access your various social networking accounts all at once, so if you thought each social network site was bad, with applications you’ll be able to access them all at once! Oh no! The good news is if your not at your usual computer you probably won’t be able to install any on your work PC because you won’t have admin permissions, though that doesn’t stop you at home! Web Applications like Tweetdeck and Digsby are much like Instant Messengers and are constantly updating you on when someone has posted something new on facebook or someone when someone has tweeted something new on Twitter.

Television (Also known as the Idiot Box)

Moving completly away from anything related to the computer, if you find yourself often working on your laptop downstairs, or even in your own bedroom with the television on it’s bound to draw you in and make your brain go to mush, often what happens if your not in the mood to do the work your doing anything on the TV suddenly becomes barable to watch, even if you were never interested in it in the first place, basically your brain saying, ‘HAAHAH Im not doing the work I’ll watch Newsnight instead, even though I know you hate it’ Then again major network channels such as the BBC, Sky Sports, ITV and others have launched there own versions of online web players which allows you to watch full TV programmes online. So really you can’t hide from television and it’s bound to catch you out many times.

So how distracted are you?

Thats my main list for distractions to ruin your producitivity but how many are you claimed by?

If you were guilty of none of the methods of Distraction
= Your lying, and you know it!

If you were guilty of 1 Method of Distraction
= Your almost on task all the time and very rarely distracted

If you were guilty of 2 Methods of Distractions
= Your mostly on task but can get distracted

If you were guilty of 3 Methods of Distractions
= Distractions are getting the better of you

If you were guilty of 4 Methods of Distractions
= You are getting distracted to much and your work is suffering

If you were guilty of 5 Methods of Distractions
= Your very rarely working thanks to those distractions

If you were guilty of all the Methods of Distraction
= You aren’t getting any work done

Well this is Dr James signing out, wishing you all a good day and good mental health (Yeah I stole that ending of Frasier) So what sue me, actually please don’t. But how did you do, comment back with how distracted you are!