10 Toxic Habits That Are Making You Less Productive

“The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.”

– Stephen Covey

We live in a very competitive age, where we are asked to receive lots of input, and deliver as much, if not more output.

We can, of course, count our blessings, as the work we do nowadays is nowhere near as hard as the work our ancestors did (that is unless you are a graphic designer and ploughman). But every job comes with its own set of obstacles, and the sad fact of the matter is that hard is still hard, until faced with harder.

As a creative, your job is making something brand new and unique, each and every day. And that is hard, no matter what the ploughmen, construction workers, or branch managers say!

There are certain factors that affect our productivity, and our mission here today is to showcase a few of these, so you will know what to look out for.

We searched the internet far and wide, and found a few really cool articles that talk about toxic habits, and we are, of course, going to provide you with the source links if you want to take a more in depth look at them.

First up, we have Michael Poh’s article published on Hongkiat.com.

1. Artificial Light

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“Getting enough sleep is not enough if the quality isn’t there. True, there are many factors that’ll affect the quality of your sleep, but the night light is probably one thing you have more control over.

For those of you with the habit of sleeping with your bedside lamp switched on, this could be the reason why you’re having trouble dozing off at night. Research has shown that exposure to light at night disrupts the production of melatonin, the hormone responsible for regulating both mood and sleep. And yes, this applies to looking at your smartphone, tablet, and computer screens, thanks to their blue wavelength lights.

Some studies have claimed that it is these blue wavelength lights that have the strongest effect on the decrease in melatonin production. You can say that the safest bet for a good night sleep is to minimise your exposure to any light sources when nearing bedtime.”

2. Social Networking Sites

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“Needless to say, spending too much time on social networking sites at work reduces your productivity. Research conducted by the University of Michigan on Facebook users revealed that greater usage of the social networking site resulted in a bigger drop in mood at the end of two weeks. Indeed, when your Facebook checking becomes obsessive and starts interfering with your everyday activities, it is a sign of addiction.

Resentment and bitterness arise when you start making inaccurate comparisons of your life with your friends’ and feel increasingly disgruntled with yourself. The result is a loss of self-esteem and a worsening of your mood.”

3. Your Posture

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“A downcast person will have a tendency to slouch, while someone bursting with confidence would hold his or her chest high up. What many of us don’t realise is that sometimes it is the way we hold our posture that determines how we feel rather than the other way round. It appears that correcting your bad posture doesn’t just benefit your health and appearance; it can even improve your state of mind.”

The next toxic habits are taken from Ludvig Suntrom’s article from LifeHack.

4. Instant Gratification

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“Instant gratification is basically anything that gives you a quick boost of stimulation without having to put in any work beforehand. When engaging in too much instant gratification, you will have trouble focusing, as a result of having conditioned your brain into believing that it doesn’t have to work before it gets its reward.  There is no easy way of quitting instant gratification. It is simply a matter of discipline.”

5. Being a Perfectionist

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“The main reason why perfectionism is harmful to productivity is because of the 80/20 principle, which is surprisingly accurate. This means that the final 20% of completing a task will usually take a disproportionally longer amount of time compared to the first 80%.”

6. Not “Warming Up”

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“Mental rehearsal is when you see yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing. For a short-distance runner, this can mean seeing himself getting off to a perfect start and then winning the race. He sees himself doing all the motions in advance, thus becoming mentally warmed up and prepared to do it in reality.”

7. Having Your Phone’s Sound and Vibrate Mode On

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“If you keep your phone in an active state, you are begging to be interrupted, and interruption demolishes focus and thus productivity. It can take over 15 minutes to get back to a state of high focus after being interrupted.”

The last habits on this list taken from an article on activities that seem to help productivity, but are, in fact, hindering it. It is written by Vivian Giang for FastCompany.

8. Relying on Task Management Software

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“While writing tasks down means you see it as actionable steps, merely collecting information means all that stuff will go back into your head because you won’t know what to do with the information after you collect it.”

9. Delaying Making Decisions

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“When you put off a task, it loses its meaning and you end up spending more energy revisiting that task and figuring out the meaning, or priority, attached to it. Instead, you need to be able to quickly integrate information, make decisions, assign it to a system or person, and move on to the next thing.”

10. Saying “Yes” to Everything

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“You might think that saying “yes” to everything makes you an easier person to work with, but doing so also makes you an unproductive person to work with. The truth is, we’re all busy people with too much on our plate.

Those who are focused and keep their eyes on the bottom-line will become the most successful. If you commit yourself to every little thing that comes your way, your path will be scrambled and you won’t get anywhere on time.”

That concludes our presentation of toxic habits that are making you less productive. We hope we have shed some light on the situation, and that we have put you on your way to remedying those unproductive little behaviours of yours.

We encourage you to check out the full articles we provided, as they include even more potentially bad and toxic habits, as well as a few suggestions of how to get rid of this toxic habits, and links to relevant studies.

Also, don’t forget to leave us your thoughts in the comment section below.

This our list of 10 Toxic Habits That Are Making You Less Productive.