If you want your business to be profitable, it needs to be productive. That means individuals and collectives within your organization need to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible.
However, many business owners struggle with misconceptions about what productivity is and how to achieve it.
In this article, we’ll be exploring several of these myths and misconceptions.
How can you correct these false ideas and find solutions to your productivity woes?
You Can Improve Productivity Without Specific Goals or Targets
Productivity is a big, abstract concept, so many business owners are inclined to believe that they can be a bit “willy-nilly with their approach. They may tinker around with different strategies, somewhat aimlessly, hoping to see a noticeable difference in productivity as a result.
Instead, it’s much better to be objective and set specific goals and targets. This way, you can concretely measure your progress – and have a sound, logical basis for all your future productivity-related decisions. Choosing the right benchmarks and KPIs to study is a great place to start. In other words, how are you going to measure productivity and what productivity levels are you trying to seek?
Until you have solid answers to these questions, any productivity improvements you try to make could end up falling flat.
Working Longer Hours Will Help Your Team Get More Done
If you want to get more done, simply work more hours. Isn’t that reasonable?
On some level, yes. In many cases, spending more time means getting more done. However, there’s a severely strict upper limit to this and many caveats to consider. For starters, as you work longer hours, you’ll become more fatigued and less capable of doing your best work. You might continue to knock out tasks, but you’ll do so with decreasing efficiency and increasing rates of mistakes.
Additionally, pushing your employees to work longer hours can backfire in several ways. Your employees may become disgruntled or burnt out, and much more likely to leave. At the very least, they’ll suffer a decline in morale, which can have a massive impact on their productivity.
In many cases, the counterintuitive solution is to allow your employees to take more breaks and vacation days. This way, the hours they do spend will become much more efficient.
Multitasking Helps Save Time
You and your employees may be tempted to do multiple things at once, such as working on a side project during a meeting. However, the science is quite settled on this front; multitasking doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. And no, you’re probably not part of the tiny minority of people who can practically multitask. Focus on one thing at a time.
Productivity Tools Are Always Worth It
Startup entrepreneurs are especially notorious for constantly seeking the latest technologies and tools to help them succeed. While new productivity tools are always interesting and often useful, they don’t come close to guaranteeing any meaningful increases in your productivity. In fact, adding too many productivity tools to your lineup can be counterproductive, causing confusion and over-expenditure. Instead, it pays to be discerning about the tools you use and make sure you’re seeing a positive ROI for each one.
Gimmicks Like Standing Desks Can Solve Major Problems
There are some studies that suggest that standing desks can make you more productive, but there’s significant conflicting information on the subject and not everyone equally benefits. Standing desks are just one of many gimmicks that seem like they can make you more productive but are either unreliable or only marginally beneficial. Exercise caution when exploring these options.
There Isn’t Much to Be Done With Unproductive Employees
Some of your team members may be inherently less productive or motivated than others. Inexperienced managers sometimes write them off, believing that the only real options are to tolerate their lack of productivity or fire them. In reality, most employees can do much better with proper coaching and different incentives. Remember that each individual is different and may require a different approach.
There Are Many One-Size-Fits-All Approaches
In line with this, throw out the notion that there are any one-size-fits-all approaches to increasing productivity. We are all unique individuals, and we all have different systems that help us optimize our productivity.
For example, some people are early birds. Some people are night owls. And yes, there’s a significant genetic factor influencing both. Mandating earlier hours will be good for early birds and bad for night owls, while mandating later hours will be good for night owls and bad for early birds. The better approach is to allow a more flexible schedule, so that everyone can work when they’re most productive.
Culture Is a Secondary Consideration
When it comes to productivity, leaders and managers often treat culture as a secondary consideration. This is because they underestimate the role that culture can play in shaping motivation, productivity, and even morale.
Taking your culture seriously by properly analyzing and espousing your core values, while reinforcing those values with good leadership, can make a huge difference in how your employees work and perceive their work.
Don’t be ashamed about buying into productivity myths, especially if it’s only temporarily. These are widespread beliefs, despite their relative falsehood. This is your opportunity to readdress how you see and think about productivity in the workplace, so you and all your team members can ultimately get more done in less time.
