How To Develop An Efficient Work Ethic

     What is an “Efficient Work Ethic”? All it is; is the ability to consistently produce acceptable work under reasonable periods of time. Having this skill is crucial for achieving success in any field, as it helps you maximize productivity and achieve your goals while wasting as little time as possible. Even though this isn’t an impossible skill to master, a few factors definitely make it more difficult for some than others; so here are a couple of problems that occur when trying to work efficiently, and also a couple of solutions to overcome those problems.

Problem 1: Procrastination

     Procrastination is “the action of delaying or postponing something.” as defined by the Oxford Dictionary. Procrastination is one of the problems almost everyone faces when trying to work efficiently because it offers distractions like social media, which can cause us to get distracted and have trouble focusing on the actual task at hand. This can also cause a significant amount of wasted time that will then lead to rushed work which will also be low in quality.

Solution 1: Eliminate Distractions

    Eliminate all possible distractions by deciding to work in the proper environment. For ex., if it’s too loud where you currently are, find another room, or find some headphones to put on, and listen to some music that puts you in your zone. Or if it’s your phone that distracts you too much, put it away, put it in another room, or just turn on ‘do not disturb’. Procrastination can be avoided if you surround yourself with an environment where it’s difficult to have access to any possible distractions.

Problem 2: Poor Time Management

     Poor time management is when a task can not be properly completed because too much time is wasted. There are a lot of different things that can cause this, but a main reason people can’t manage time properly is because without realizing it, they end up spending too much time on tasks that shouldn’t take them as long as they do. For ex., an experiment from ‘Studyfinds.org‘ found that “6 in 10 people habitually hit the snooze button each morning”. This means that right off the bat, first thing in the morning, most people already wasted some time, by spending more time sleeping than they had planned the night before. Though wasting five minutes of time may not seem like anything, if five minutes is wasted on other small tasks; those five minutes will end up adding up and then take away a large chunk of time you had set up to actually do a larger task. Poor time management should also be a habit we all strive to move away from because of its ability to lead to feelings of stress and anxiety.

Solution 2: Properly Plan Your Day

     Learn to stay organized by creating a planner for yourself. Start off your first schedule by just writing down everything you want to do for the day. Don’t even write down what time you need to do everything. So on the first day treat it more as a to-do list instead of a schedule. After that, on the second day, reflect back on your first-day schedule, and try to add time slots to each task of the day. By doing this, now your brain knows it only has limited time for each task and will use time throughout the day more wisely so that it can get everything done in its assigned time slot. Now, finally, on day 3, reflect back on day 2. Now you can see how many tasks couldn’t be achieved because you had no time, and now from day 4 and onward, you’ll begin to identify time-wasting activities and eliminate them from your routine. This will also help you know which tasks to prioritize, and will get you into the routine of managing your time properly.

Problem 3: Lack of Motivation

     A lack of motivation is having a decreased willingness to initiate or persist in activities that are required or desired. This is when we let our feelings and emotions take control of us. This is when we let that one bad day get to our heads. Because of a couple of bad experiences, we begin to question all that we do and it’s worth; and we begin to think that we don’t need to do all of the things that we do. But that couldn’t be more untrue, because our daily, busy routines are designed to help us be more productive and actually achieve our goals.

Solution 3: Remember All You Did

     Sometimes without realizing it, we achieve way more than we realize. We should all learn to appreciate ourselves more. We should celebrate our small victories. This doesn’t mean to get prideful of a job well done, but instead, we should acknowledge what was done correctly, and try to repeat the process with more complex tasks. By appreciating ourselves, we learn that we are capable of achieving, so it’s useless to let a bad day or two get to our heads.

     In conclusion, an efficient work ethic is crucial because it allows us to achieve all that we are actually capable of. It helps us minimize wasting time and teaches us to constantly aim to improve in one field or another. This can sometimes be a difficult skill to master, but by taking it step by step and using some of the tips I just shared with you, hopefully, you can do it!