There’s much buzz going about what is employee performance and as an employee, “How do I maximize my performance potential?”
Your performance at work is not the everyday productivity spikes and lows that you face in the office. Even if you are the first to come and last to leave your workplace, the chances are that you are probably not a high-performing employee. When we talk about high-performance, we speak in the sense of outcome improvement, over output improvement.
This article aims to explore the various factors when effectuated into a daily routine will start providing reliable and consistent long-term rewards. Let us begin by answering, “what is employee work performance?”
How can you improve your performance at work is something we’ve been trying to answer ourselves, and the answer we arrived at was Continuous Performance Management. Performance improvement is about systematically striving to become better at what you do every day. It is more of a series of steps that you take, which will reward you with micro-improvements as opposed to a single action that produces a definitive result. The goal of high-performance is more about smart work over hard work, and taking care of all the other factors that may influence your productivity.
We started out exploring if there are top 3 ways to improve performance at work. However, after much exploration, we’ve concluded that performance-improvement factors are a subjective metric. For someone capable of execution, may suffer from ideation and planning. While someone may be good at creative ideation, their implementation may relatively suffer. Though the thought having to work on only three things will help you boil down your efforts and be more aware of them, it is, however, a set of cumulative practices only that help you slowly progress towards your peak performance.
What is job performance, and why is it important?
Every employee’s performance is crucial as it answers a critical question for the leaders. “Am I unlocking the full potential of all my employees?”. The modern workforce is seldom performing at peak productivity at all-times. The reason is a combination of multiple factors that may directly or indirectly influence their performance. It is not only a case of underperformers being penalized but also a reality check as to whether an organization’s top performers are truly pushing their limits.
Stop thinking about your areas of improvement in terms of your appraisal. Though it’s understandable everyone needs the money, and monetary incentives are a great motivator. High-performance is something that requires an intrinsic drive of self-motivation over anything else. When the motivator is a monetary incentive, unless you are the highest-paid employee, you are bound to start comparing and start measuring your “time” as a commodity as opposed to an investment in a productive career.
As opposed to the popular myth, high-performance is also not about the quantity of work, though it seems very plausible to correlate the number of hours you put in with productivity. True productivity lies in forming well-rounded behavioral habits while constantly seeking and pursuing goals for self-improvement. A cluster of 100 such factors has been documented below along with a brief explanation of added benefits, for reference.
1) Set Milestones
It is impossible to improve without a north star. Carefully introspect a handful of goals that matter to you and strive towards them in small steps one day at a time. Doing this activity will give you a sense of accomplishment after every short term goal is accomplished, and that helps you stay on track with your long term mission.
2) Keep your ducks in a row
Once you have segregated your long term goals into bite-sized chunks, give each of them an order or priority. Now, couple the ones that are to be completed at the earliest with the ones that can be completed quickly. This will make you accomplish the easy goal first, which will in-turn drive you to complete the essential goal.
3) Do not overburden yourself
Have a realistic estimate of your capabilities. Ensure the responsibilities you take up can be completed within your time limit. Do not get idealistic and think pragmatically. One quick rule you can set for yourself is that you won’t allow yourself to extend the deadline; this ensures you settle for nominal but achievable goals instead of shooting for the stars.
4) Do not succumb to the perfectionist trap
Sometimes, done is better than perfect. Always complete your tasks at regular intervals and later optimize them at regular increments. This not only helps you give a sense of completion after every draft but also helps you pin-point the previous mistakes and ensure you can correct them.
5) Plan beforehand
Making a thorough plan in advance will help you quickly pick the tasks that you want complete and say no to the ones you cannot, no matter how interesting you consider them to be. Peak performance is more about accomplishing as much as possible within as little time.
6) Don’t be a people pleaser
When you are collaborating your efforts with another person, it is pertinent to communicate with each other’s ownership and the deadline. If you think you fellow collaborator is leaving too much slack for you to pick up, establish a clear relationship, while gently refusing their request i. This would establish clear etiquette between the both of you to work for a team.
7) Keep your focus aligned
Use a goal s or performance software like Upsholty to have you reminded about all due deliverables so that periodically you get reminded to stay on top of your goals. Try a time management habit such as the Pomodoro method to keep you aligned.
8) Avoid disturbance
Today it is now a norm to be so busy and distracted, and no one remembers how distraction is a choice. Plan your task and choose to focus on it as the sole priority, unless something urgent comes as a priority, actively choose to ignore it. Politely request colleagues from disturbing until you are done with your said commitment.
9) Do one task at a time
Sometimes it is common for us to switch between multiple tasks to get relieved from the monotony. However, your brain reaches something called a flow state once it’s immersed long enough within a specific job, and this flow-state provides peak productivity. It also helps you avoid interruptions better while also reducing the frequency of your mistakes.
10) Complete a single task before you move
The sense of accomplishment serves as a driving force that motivates you to complete the next — sticking to a single task until it’s done leaves you with little wiggle-room from procrastination. Consistent achievement followed by rewards is a positive cycle that can be repeated multiple times.
11) Learn something new each day
The real underperformance happens when there’s stagnation of information, your pre-frontal cortex needs a constant influx of information to munch on, be thrilled about or form opinions. It’s your job to provide it with new information, that adds to your imagination, and improves your performance.
12) Be a better communicator
Communication often goes both ways. In case you are unsure of a common understanding, feel free to get it clarified. Humans are innately bad at expressing their complete understanding. Unless you expect your collaborators to read your mind, you need to ask them and get asked to solidify the mutual understanding.
13) Know your weaknesses
The first step towards improvement starts with acknowledging there is scope for it. Find the aspects of your performance that you believe is holding you down and strive to overcome them piece by piece each day. Though we all innately suffer from a self-serving bias that often makes us believe in our flawlessness, we should account for it and acknowledge our imperfection.
14) Practice the 50 minute hour
Every hour of work, you do should be followed by a 10-minute break. However, you have to absolutely ensure that the break is only 10 minutes and is only justified after 50 minutes of focused work. If you do feel tired and unable to push through, call it a day and get back on the task with a rejuvenated vigor.
15) Practice positivity
The easiest aid in improving upon something lies in not viewing it as an obstacle. An optimistic mindset instills a child-like curiosity that often displaces the adult narrative of struggling to be better. Better yet, cheerfulness is often contagious and might as well be picked up by the people around you who’ll feed you back the same joy, which will only help you grow effortlessly.
16) Look to specialize
Though we all contain multitudes that crave expression of the self, capitalism often rewards only those that are specialist. We as humans have invented a human conveyor belt of products and services wherein each of us is a station it passes through. Our performance and growth lie in how much better we are at our assigned function.
17) Invest in accreditations and certifications
Professional certifications often reflect your enthusiasm to learn and grow more. Doing this not only helps your current employer leverage your skillset but also helps you not remain stagnant compared to your peers. Though it is elementary to get baited by pure certification training institutes, a little research will open the door to something that’s truly valued in your niche.
18) Listen Actively
Active listening is often taught to theatre practitioners, and it’s a long-lost art.
The better you reflect honesty and sincerity towards a person having a conversation with you, the more you’ll be able to gather information acutely. It will also help them develop an interest in the discussion, which ultimately leads to greater exchange of information.
19) Develop humility
Humility in our current economy makes a lot of business sense. Though we all want people to be genuinely happy and prosperous, deep down, we don’t want them to get too successful that makes us feel inadequate. However, success isn’t perceivable unless you display it voluntarily or involuntarily. A simple way to eliminate this predicament is to be nonchalant about whatever they believe you have achieved.
20) Plan ahead of time
As humans, there’s an inherent inability present in us to successfully determine a future outcome, or correlate the next hindrance following our current behavior. Meticulousness is your best friend that helps you repat a set of thoughtful actions that are bound to bring you the right kind of consequences. Discuss with your boss, peer, and every stake-holder to come up with a plan and resort to execution without revisiting the said plan.
21) Form connections
We’ve as humans have been living as tribes since we were speaking and human relationships tend to help us with peak performance, more than anything can. Making colleagues and partners at work lends us an external perspective that can catch our oversights much faster and help us rectify our mistakes sooner.
22) Be your best fan
Every accolade, award, and a trophy that you have collected as a fruit of your professional effort deserves to be collected, stored, and celebrated. More than a cognizance, they also serve as a milestone for how much you have grown. They also reinforce the idea that efforts bring recognition and reward, which in itself is an effective intrinsic motivator.
23) Choose to go outside
Though we’ve come a long way from siphoned and drab cubicles with modern hives and hip looking office spaces, we’re no more than erudite hamsters on sophisticated wheels. It serves us better to be blissfully ignorant of the cog once in a while so that we run faster once we get back to it.
24) Take a look at what others do
An easy way to gain a new perspective is to observe something different. It could be something in a different department, shadowing an interviewer, or accompanying somebody on a sales pitch. The mere exposure to various functions will light up the big-picture understanding of your brain, that’ll help you gather applicable insights to your responsibility.
25) Keep asking why
Once you make curiosity your best friend, you’ll seldom be in a rut. The constant quest for a new source of knowledge and thinking is bound to keep you on the verge of exploring additional possibilities. Though seemingly intentionless, this serves a larger purpose of aiding your thinking during times of critical importance. Many successful CEOs have attributed timely business decisions to a seemingly random observation in their time of leisure.
26) Leverage automation
Machinery is humanity’s greatest toolset until it replaces all from our jobs. There are bound to be certain aspects of your work that are mundane and routine. Delegating it to a pre-organized framework of processes will save your manual effort and gives you more freedom to pursue novelty.
27) Have 1:1 conversation
As a manager or an employee, 1:1 conversation makes a lot of sense to discuss and overcome your obstacles and challenges at work. It is important for us to feel that our job growth is aligned with the career goals that we envision for ourselves. This often requires scheduled and regular meetings with your boss, however with a tool like Upshotly; you can directly integrate it into your weekly schedule and get notified on time!
28) Ask and give feedback
Some of the most excellent insights about our quirks and shortcomings can be from someone who is too polite to say unless asked. The road to high-performance is often paved with constructive criticism that helps us evaluate ourselves and also help us contribute to someone’s growth.
29) Work on your feedback
It is human nature to get offended when called out. However, to grow as a professional one must exercise an enormous amount to maturity to see it not as a personal assault on one’s self-esteem, but rather an objective remark on one’s performance that can be very well changed. Once this realization is realized, you start taking responsibility for your growth, and High-performance merely becomes a consequence.
30) Choose three things to start your day
Always choose to start your day with three essential elements, and make it a ritual. Rituals have a way of establishing order to your day ahead and help you carry on with your daily workload with complete focus.
31) Recognize good performance
If you genuinely believe a peer or your boss deserves a pat on the back, don’t hesitate to give it to them! Once you routinely become observant of those who are contributing positively around you, you’ll tend to share the same willfulness to get better and also work with an increased sense of self-awareness whenever you get complacent.
32) Sign up to be someone’s Mentor or a Mentee
The mentor-mentee relationship is a great way to give a helping hand and also to receive one in times of need. Seeing you making a positive change or being taught to will help you not only gain the wealth of knowledge but also improves productivity. A mentee or mentor is a trusted partner who wishes nothing but success for you; this foundation of security can do wonders for your career and personal growth.
33) Use the right OKR tools
OKRs are the driving force behind the growth of many new teams. By using specific tools that help you leverage this framework, you’ll benefit in both the short term and long term. Cloud-based easy to access tools proportionately increase your productivity and ensure high performance.
34) Prioritize what you were hired for
More often than not, it starts with a small additional responsibility, and later you find yourself piled with excessive burdens that you never signed up. Now you find yourself failing deadlines on work that you were answerable. Though being helpful is a priority, it shouldn’t be at the cost of shirking your primary responsibilities. Carefully prioritize the crucial tasks from the ones that can be completed later.
35) Have a personal goal
Every career requires a steady march towards a specific personal accomplishment. Because we are all inherently selfish, and without an own goal, you won’t get ahead as a professional. You work best when you work for yourself. Try to integrate a personal goal along with your professional responsibilities which
36) Remember Pareto’s principle
20% of your job hours product 80% of the most impactful results on the job. So we should be more mindful of how we spend those 20% time in maximizing our performance and productivity.
37) Organize your desk
Most of us get comfortable with the orderly chaos that surrounds our working desk and has found it easy to maneuver around the maze without disturbing the alignment. However, rearranging the items before every task to only accommodate those relevant to the job will improve productivity and helps us feel more in control.
38) Come to work a little early
If you are genuinely motivated to become a high performer, it’s imperative that you show up a little early than your expected time and plan your day. A simple act of laying down what you want to do drastically helps you iron out small details and problems that you may face. It also helps to sit in an empty office and plan your day so that at any point of interruption you exactly know where to pick it up.
39) Listen to white noise
Research has proven that we tend to sleep if things are too silent or get too distracted by lyrics in case of something like a song. The most productive noise so far is a faint cacophony that’s mildly disruptive so as not to put you to sleep, but also reasonably annoying that you can’t enjoy it either. This noise can be the sound of a loud Air conditioner or something like a newton’s cradle that you can keep in front of your desk.
40) Stay aware of you feel
The human body possesses a limited amount of energy and a plethora of chemicals inside. Anything from a wrong diet to a wrong drink can send it spiraling down. If you are acutely aware of what you feel at any point, you’ll take the right actions to stay productive as a consequence.
41) Avoid high carb meals
Carbohydrates break faster than proteins, and heavy meals before the day or lunch might send bloodstream towards your gut, which means less for your brain to remain active. Food coma is one of the most significant causes of depreciation in productivity, so planning the right diet can help you avoid it.
42) Manage your cravings
Our body is a chemical soup, and most of us are already accustomed to chemicals such as caffeine, nicotine, or even sugar. It’s imperative that you manage these cravings accordingly. In case you’re trying to come out of an unhealthy habit, then you should plan accordingly. Especially when sudden deprivation of these can cause mood irritation and may even make you unproductive.
43) Don’t get in-between workplace conflict
It’s common for conflict of interest to arrive between two passionate team-members. Even if you believe you have a logical solution, politely recuse yourself from the conversation and calmly continue your work. When you take sides, you ultimately get pulled from your zone of productivity and start getting involved in the conversation.
44) Critique yourself
One of the best and never-ending way to self-improvement is being your own worst critic. You are most acutely aware of your strengths and weaknesses, which helps you thoroughly analyze your advantages and shortcomings. Doing his helps you always search and improvise on small but recurring mistakes that you keep doing.
45) Triple-Check your work
Most of us fail to check back on something we accomplished. Though we’d like it to be flawless, none of us are perfect as see we be. Once you check your work more than twice, you’ll uncover subtle nuances that you overlooked or a significant change that you decided to make but forgot. In every situation, the time spent double-checking will save you multifold over time spent in the repetition of the same task.
46) Stay hydrated
Dehydration is one of the significant factors of work-related fatigue. Irrespective of whether or not you work in a tropical country, drinking plenty of water will help your body maintain it’s temperature and it’s chemical equilibrium. This balance is vital for you to focus your energy on work.
47) Use your holidays
Even if you feel that you don’t require to use all the vacation days, it’s imperative to relax and take a break on those days that you don’t have to work. Though climbing the professional ladder is very much a tough job, no one can do it without some rest.
48) Avoid working on weekends
Majority of the mental health related work problems arise due to bringing additional baggage home on weekends, and this not only makes you frustrated and angry, but this deep-seated emotional turmoil also makes you unhappy and unproductive during the weekdays.
49) Take care of your mental health
Mental well-being too, is as important as physical well-being, and in case you find yourself not interested or focused on the job, try to seek professional help to determine if something far more fundamental is what’s the cause for concern and not dismiss it lightly.
50) Get enough rest
To ensure productivity every workday morning, it requires you to come up with an adequate amount of sleep and rest the previous night. Try to set a clear timetable for sleep and ensure you follow a particular cycle to let your body get accustomed to it. Once this cycle is fixed, it automatically replenishes energy and keeps you focused at work.
51) Treat failures as an experience
We all are bound to fail at some point or the other, where it’s going to feel insurmountable. The smart thing to do is fast forward to your shame and start questioning where you went wrong. Once you start following this simple trick, you will save twice as much time for every minute you spend doing it.
52) Don’t shy away from additional effort
Sometimes you would’ve dug 90 feet in a 100 feet goldmine and all you need to do it persist. Though it’s natural for us to leave the workplace once our committed time is over, little sacrifices like staying back once-in-a-while will help you forge a mentality of working for your satisfaction over that of your employer. In the long run, self-satisfaction is the most excellent motivator for any career.
53) Take accountability
Treat your word as gospel and agree to only the things you can deliver. Sticking true to your word helps others see you as trustworthy and capable, while also bolstering their confidence in you. It also enables you to become a smart performer as you won’t commit to anything you can’t be delivered.
54) Split your effort
Dissect your big projects into bite-sized chunks that can be easily overcome and plan in small increments over big jumps. It’s easy to see your performance climb in short intervals and also helps you to do course correction faster in case you’re heading in the wrong direction.
55) Track your productive hours
Measure the time of the day where you contribute the maximum and work out a plan to make the most of it. Use tools and digital apps to track and systematically improve peak performance at this time of your working hours. This activity will not only make you more mindful of your work but also help you form reliable, productive patterns on an everyday basis.
56) Follow a 2-minute rule
The two-minute rule can be used to overcome the initial aversion towards starting a significant deliverable. It states that you should start any project with a smaller chunk of action that can be completed in two minutes or less. This rule helps you grease your wheels before you get into the groove of peak productivity.
57) Avoid procrastination
It’s sometimes unavoidable to feel like doing something later, at this juncture either you can take a break before getting back into the same task or try to find the interesting bits within the existing project to be completed first. This perspective, along with the two-minute rule, can help you quickly overcome the urge to postpone or procrastinate.
58) Use your travel time wisely
Though Facebook, Netflix, Instagram, and Candy crush is much more exciting alternatives in a tiresome journey by the metro or the bus; utilizing this time to reflect on your plan for the day or getting your tasks updated on a project management software like Asana can be a great way to be organized without spending much time getting your ducks in a row at work.
59) Don’t hold yourself to perfection
Sometimes, the feeling of inadequacy of a particular output is unavoidable, and it’s only human to feel shitty while turning in inadequate performance. However, it’s essential to realize that thoughts can quickly materialize in your brain, while the real world has its own set of difficulties and rules that may prevent you from achieving instant perfection.
60) Take a genuine interest in what you set out to do
Though it’s impossible to stay interested in any routine that you do for a while, continually generating new perspectives at the way you look at your job can give your brain the refreshing change that it so desperately deserves. It is possible to trick your brain into liking something so that it serves you better.
61) Stretch it out
Maintaining a single posture will hamper both your health and productivity. Take short breaks to stretch your muscles once in a while. Play a quick game of ping-pong if you have such a facility in your workplace. Read up on simple yoga postures that help you keep your back straight so that you are utterly productive throughout the day.
62) Take power naps
Depending upon your workplace culture, if you can, you should shut-eye for 15-20 minute interval so that you can get back to work with a much clearer focus. However, the body tends to get confused if you start repeating your nap at the same time every day, and you’ll start feeling sleepy precisely at that time.
63) Create an internal reward system
We’re wired to pursue rewards when faced with a long-term goal. Use the findings of the Marshmellow experiment to give yourself the delayed gratification. Creating a reward system releases a constant influx of dopamine that will drive you towards pursuing the same feeling again.
64) Make your desk a happy spot
It could be any object that makes you happy upon seeing it. It could be a flower or a plant to a photo of your loved one. A happy workplace gives you a sense of belonging and also provides you with a quick spike of dopamine that will help you wade through mood swings or untimely sleep.
65) Run effective meetings
The most unproductive hours of your working are often in unplanned meetings that tend to utilize much of your cognitive listening and attention span. If you are planning a conference, ensure that the agenda and schedule are all noted and accounted. A planned meeting will not only save your precious time but also give your team a consistent string of thought to be addressed throughout the conference.
66) Practice leadership
Often, thinking of yourself from your boss’s shoes will give you a fresh insight and understanding of their perspective. Doing this will help you listen to them more carefully and also justify your productivity during times of performance appraisals or evaluation.
67) Get involved in your company’s mission
Long term vision and mission exist for a reason, knowing where your organization is headed will also help you contribute there more effectively. Staying engaged at work will signal to your bosses or your boss’s bosses that you feel like a part of the organization and hence only take steps to improve it as a whole. This activity will also help you maintain productivity and performance as the responsibility is now much more massive than yourself.
68) Be a team player
It’s easier to take and give help than do things alone. Once you start taking the advice of your peers to accomplish something. It will be better than what you individually aimed. The mutual collaboration will also help you evaluate each other’s performance and keep you on the edge of productivity
69) Practice autonomy
Though modern organizations are now getting done with hierarchy and giving complete autonomy to individuals, it’s best practice for oneself to realize his/her responsibility and take the initiative to get it done their way. Doing things your way gives you the ownership of you affecting a change. We seldom underperform when doing something that represents our sincere aligned effort.
70) Don’t be competitive
Unless it’s an intrinsic job such as sales, that improves productivity through competition. It’s not advisable to get competitive in a team setting. Though it’s natural for us to want to be the achievers, true high-performance comes through mutual collaboration, harmony, and respect. Being approachable will make you get more work done and stay competitive in your domain.
71) Build a professional network
More often than not, we don’t know that we don’t know anything. This innate gap in our knowledge can be bridged by forging a relationship with our peers and collaborators from similar or different areas of expertise. These professional relationships will help you seek multiple perspectives in your time of need. The other view may tend to make a long-standing problem too dull even to be a roadblock in the first place.
72) Have an active social life
Nobody wants to be that person who hates social activity. However, a constant thought towards work and better ways to do it may slowly drift us apart from friends, family, or just plain fun. Have fun as often as you can, as it keeps you alive. None of us can be high-performing individuals who are also unhappy.
73) Hang out with the hard workers
The unhelpful habits that we cultivate and make us unproductive are often amplified by the equally lackadaisical company that we keep. By surrounding ourselves with people who strive to become better performers will also make us emulate their passion and drive in our work.
74) Grow outside your comfort zone
The key to high performance often starts with a constant question for knowledge outside our expertise. Though we may not be initially as good at any new skill. Overcoming the friction to learn something new will pave the way for compounded professional and personal growth in a multitude of skillsets.
75) Don’t count your hours
High-performance is never a result of working too long or working too little. Neither of us is too smart to work only a short while or too ineffective to tie ourselves to the office. It’s about working as long or as little as it takes to achieve our overall objective in a planned and systematic way with continuous progress.
76) Manage your risks
Always give yourself some leeway for unforeseen circumstances that may impede your progress and plan accordingly. Though this doesn’t mean a paranoia of everything that could falter, but rather a mature and calculated assessment of the parts of your total contribution that may be significantly affected due to variables outside your sphere of influence. Doing this helps you not lose your momentum and stay on the path of high-performance.
77) Reflect on your productivity after every day
Once the workday ends, all of us are overwhelmed by that feeling to grab the nearest mode of transport and whisk home. However, high-performance is a lifestyle, and for you to ingrain it into your work, you have to spend a few minutes going through your day and asking if you genuinely accomplished what you set outdo. Doing this makes you painfully aware of your shortcomings and will serve as a burning desire to do better tomorrow.
78) Be courteous
Using blunt language to convey anything may help you get things across, but high-performance is a cascading effect, and any peer whose feelings or sentiments you hurt unintentionally may end up remembering about it every time in the future. Politeness though considered meek, could very well be a powerful tool for leveraging action through soft-power.
79) Ask for a raise
High-performance is a lifestyle that demands the maximum effort from every employee. However, nobody wants to work for free or feel underpaid. If you believe your compensation is not enough or feeling undervalued, which is depreciating your performance. Have a conversation with your boss to set a clear target that you’ll reach to show him your capability and for which you’d like monetary compensation.
80) Develop Hobbies
A fulfilling work-life requires a dedicated personal life that also caters to the right brain functionality. Learning a new art form such as poetry or theatre, can help you not only fill the creative void but also help you be more productive at work the following day.
81) Engage in workout
Exercise enables you to control your heart rate and your biological clock. A healthy workout regimen would help you feel energized throughout the day and keep your blood circulation and energy in order. As a high-performer, it’s also necessary to keep your body as pristine as your ability to focus and work.
82) Pursue meditation
Research has derived a direct correlation between high productivity and the emission of alpha-waves. Sitting with your eyes closed for 20 minutes every day will give you a much-needed break from a continuous stream of modern distraction while also filling you up with positivity and alpha wave state. This activity also allows you to avoid distraction at a stretch not capable by most.
83) Look up to someone
When we have a professional role model, it is easy to mimic their everyday activity and keep ourselves updated and what their current interests are. With the advent of LinkedIn and medium, professional influencers are real rockstars, and they consistently give out great content that we can directly apply to our responsibility.
84) Be entrepreneurial
When you start wanting to run a business, you work for your company in a way that you’d expect someone to work for yours. This radical change in the mindset will help you progress within your organization as a high-performers. Productivity comes as a by-product of knowing what to do to get profitable.
85) Follow a blog or a podcast
Modern business content has exploded drastically, and it has never been able to satiate professional curiosity by indulging in a blog or a podcast hosted by a niche authority. When you develop a specialization, you become more productive solely through the effort you spent in a particular field.
86) Avoid loud phonecalls
As much as possible, try to limit your phone time. In case of a work-related call or an emergency, try to be polite as not to disturb your teammates or fellow collaborators. High-performance is a team effort, and you are inevitable sabotaging the same cause you are working towards.
87) Have breakfast
I am no cereal maker, and I am not going to call it the “most important meal fo the day”. However, filling yourself with a quick fix or a juice can provide you with the requisite amount of sucrose that your brain needs to function at sustained levels of concentration.
88) Become an authority on social media
Modern channels offer us the capability to not only share our learnings but also influence other people to take part in our expertise by acknowledging its helpfulness and also contributing to our wealth of knowledge. Productivity is often driven by results and a personal following on a particular niche topic will serve as a strong motivator to keep learning and writing about it.
89) Do not complain
Though it is understandable at specific points, we are loaded with work that we did not sign-up form; if you want to utilize the maximum productivity of your performance politely decline, or finish what you undertook. Though a passing remark and a brief comment to a colleague may seem harmless, it may reflect untowardly on your character and might stop more opportunities coming your way.
90) Take notes
Note-taking is the most underrated productivity booster in a modern workplace. If you are averse to pen and paper, try a digital alternative such as Evernote which, not only helps you keep a record of your everyday interaction, but also help you revisit older notes to recall essential details that you might have missed and maintain your productivity schedule without going off-track.
91) Use shortcuts
Life hacks and shortcuts exist to increase our productivity. A high-performer does not mean you believe in doing everything yourself. If you can figure out a slick keyboard shortcut, or a more natural way to get a task done without spending much effort or compromising the quality of the output, you should go ahead.
92) Recuperate from missed deadlines
It’s not the high-performers cannot afford to lose periods; what you indeed cannot do is turn in shoddy work. In case you have missed a particular deadline, try to come up with a schedule of all your upcoming deliverables and incorporate it into your plan. Giving up on a timeline to come back later might set the wrong precedent for future procrastination.
93) Dress comfortably
Attire can be a prime cause for distress, especially when it’s uncomfortable. Ensure you wear something comfortable to work with and also is a reflection of yourself. When you feel confident about yourself, you tend to get more work done and also be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.
94) Maintain professional looks
Ensure your hairstyle and appearance reflect your professionalism. Prepare your looks in a way that bolster your confidence and makes people pay attention to what you have to say. When there’s confidence, you’ll get more people listening to you and will also get more done.
95) Avoid long lunch
Though it is okay to go for a more extended lunch break once in a while. It might signal as being lackadaisical in case you extend your specific allotted lunchtime every day. Have a planned lunch hour where everyone knows you will be outside and return to your workplace accordingly. Doing this will ensure overall productivity as your peers will know exactly when and when not to approach you.
96) Stay motivated
A key to high-performance is the constant hunger to stay motivated and hungry to accomplish a better outcome. It is imperative that you develop a sense of intrinsic motivators apart from existing external motivation such as salary and recognition. Try to instill a sense of ownership in anything you do so that people start acknowledging that you are in for the long run.
97) Exercise remote work option
Sometimes the office space and everyday workplace hassle may hamper your productivity, and at these times, coffee shops or co-working hives may serve as a better alternative to sit with your team and engage in productive collaboration. A coffee-shop with a free wife set up may also help you feed creativity and novelty in case of creative deliverables such as a marketing copy or a sales collateral.
98) Write a blog
Often we come across a considerable roadblock which we were left to figure out by ourselves with a closing deadline. Chances are, people outside to are finding themselves in the very same fix as yours. If you believe you have accurate knowledge to be contributed, go ahead and put it out on the internet. Doing this simple activity will not only let you know if you had pursued the most novel form of approach but also bring you a wealth of contacts and feedback which you can incorporate into your work later.
99) Use mind mapping
Mind mapping is a powerful brainstorming tool that can help you quickly categorize your ideation into multiple components. When you tackle each of these individual components, it brings a greater sense of clarity and ease while problem-solving. For making these mind maps, you can leverage a tool like miro to collaborate with others and seek their inputs.
100) Fill your everyday check-ins
When you fill your daily check-ins, it not only gives your manager a clear view of plans-progress and problems but also gives you a clear sense of personal progress for the current day or week. Systematically doing check-ins using software like upshotly, will foster a clear path to high-performance as an individual and a team.
101) Plan a workation with your team
If you find everyone in your team scurrying around to conquer a strict deadline, request permission from HR to go on a workation that will provide a change of scenery and perspective for everyone in the team. A new place with new people will not only take away the drudgery of meeting the deadline but will also making working an enjoyable process, the way it is supposed to be. A workation is a sure-fire way of engaging and keeping a high-performing team on its toes.
That concludes the end of our 101 ways to improve your performance and of those around you. Though this list is a culmination of all the suggested best practices that are bound to benefit both you and your organization as a whole, you can also go ahead and come up with a novel set of rules that work for you. It could either be by borrowing elements from this list or coming up with your own set of rules, either way, the path to high-performance start with thinking of ways to become one and by completing this read, you’re already on the right track!
