We’ve all done it – kept at work until late with a heavy load of work that needs to be finished. It all leads to you lacking sleep the next morning all because you haven’t slept long enough. What do you do in such a situation?
To avoid going through the same pain you’re going through now, you should create a list of everything you need to do that particular day and list them based on due dates. You could create targets but they aren’t going to be as useful as you may think yet.
If you’re feeling sleepy now, try stepping out of your office and get some fresh air to boost your Productivity. It allows you to take a break from sitting down at your desk staring at your computer screen, working on that document that you need to urgently finish but have no idea where to start because you haven’t switched on properly.
If you can’t leave the office, try finding something you need to do which requires you to take a trip across the office – whether it is visiting another colleague at their desk or collecting a print out from the printer. Don’t rush it but rather extend the time you complete the task by two minutes, giving yourself sufficient time to wake up and open your senses if you haven’t already.
While you’re on your feet, grab something to eat or drink. Fruit is the cheapest option if you have it already and the most natural thing to eat in order to wake yourself up. If fruit isn’t available, seek out a vending machine. Most offices have coffee vending machines which dispense coffee and other hot drinks as well as snacks that are fairly cheap for employees to buy. These options are great and should provide you with either caffeine or sugar. Although it may not be the best option for your wallet, it certainly works for most. Even though it may not be the healthiest option or the best money saving option, it works for most participants.
It doesn’t matter what piece of advice you follow from the above list, don’t procrastinate and think “I’ll do it later”. By procrastinating, you’re affecting your work as you start to become unnecessarily stressed whilst creating a backlog of incomplete work for you and the rest of your colleagues to struggle through after work hours resulting in delays to projects waiting for your work.
Finally, you should setup the goals missing from your to-do list you created earlier. It will result in better time and project management on your part as well as making it easier on yourself. However, in order for your to-do list to work, you need to stick to it and don’t use it for a few days and eventually give up. You should consider making each task as strict as you can but be a little flexible on time constraints in case of any errors occurring. The main goal in creating a to-do list is to complete each task with a great amount of focus so you can leave work at the end of a busy day with a sense of achievement and not a heavy backlog of work to take home.