The 10 Worst Productivity Mistakes
As a community of Executive Assistants, helping clients boost their productivity is our bread and butter. We often see experienced business leaders who manage their organization with incredible expertise—but still feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that needs to be done.
Yet, we all know someone who is able to magically accomplish everything they set out to do, and still have enough time left over to achieve a great work-life balance. What gives?
Those who set themselves apart in terms of productivity all share a single trait: they’re able to manage themselves, avoid distractions, and use their time effectively. That sounds simple, but it most certainly is not.
There are tons of resources, tips, tricks, and hacks for enhancing productivity, so for this article we decided to do something different. We scoured the net for the best, research-backed advice on actions that hurt overall productivity–and how you can avoid them. By avoiding these common pitfalls, you should be able to elevate your work and still have time to smell the daisies!
Mistake #1 - Not Getting Enough Sleep
Studies have shown time and again the incredible importance of getting enough sleep. Research shows that people who don’t get enough sleep suffer all sorts of negative effects, from a direct increase in stress and emotional issues to a decrease in the performance of cognition and memory recall. It’s also been associated with weight gain, headaches, and other general pain–and that’s all just in the short term.
Even small adjustments like “spring forward” during daylight saving time results in an 8% increase in strokes, and a 6% increase in fatal car crashes. The long term effects of sleep deprivation and disturbances have been linked to high blood pressure, cancer, heart attacks, and a general increase in mortality rates!
Sleep is the foundation of success. If you think you might not be getting enough sleep, follow this comprehensive guide to get your bedtime back on track!
Mistake #2 - Starting Your Day Wrong
Lesser known is the impact of properly utilized mornings. Similar studies have shown that we’re at our highest functioning capabilities after the first few hours of waking–a time that is usually wasted checking email, browsing social media, or sitting through meetings. Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics, had this to say about mornings:
“One of the saddest mistakes in time management is the propensity of people to spend the two most productive hours of their day on things that don’t require high cognitive capacity...“If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want.”
How to Start Your Day Off Right:
Stay away from that snooze button!
Don’t look at your phone as soon as you wake up
Eat a good breakfast
Don’t drink coffee right away–wait until around 10am-12pm (Start your day with a big glass of water instead!)
Do your best to avoid social media, email, and meetings first thing in the morning
Schedule your most important, focus-requiring work for the two hours after you become fully awake.
Mistake #3 - Wasting Time and Energy with Invisible Multitasking
There are huge volumes of work from scientific studies to books written by productivity professionals that demonstrate how multitasking destroys our performance in various ways. There’s so much data out there proving why this is a bad habit that we’re almost sure you know this one: Multitasking is bad.
What you might not have heard before is the concept of invisible multitasking. Sometimes we multitask without even trying to, resulting in all the same terrible impairments of regular multitasking.
Invisible multitasking is mostly the result of incorrectly labelling what is really a project as a task. For instance, writing a blog article could be seen as a task, but really it’s a small project comprising many different tasks. First you must decide a topic, then research it, find supporting evidence, write the blog, edit it, choose some images… you get the idea.
This applies to many different things, from creating presentations and business development to planning large meetings. The good news is there’s an easy way to fix the issue.
How to Avoid Invisible Multitasking:
Properly identify longer tasks with multiple steps as small projects
Break those projects down into smaller pieces (the actual tasks)
Accomplish those tasks one at a time
Also be sure to avoid distractions while working, such as music with lyrics or listening to the radio–anything that can split your attention
Mistake #4 - Spending Too Much Time on Email
This is one that we’re all guilty of, and the research shows it. Adobe’s annual email usage study shows that American workers spend an average of 3-5 hours every day working on emails. Even if you’re an outlier and only spend an hour on email per day–that’s likely still too much.
We hear so much about this particular issue at 33Vincent that we recently developed a new service called Inbox Reset, which helps busy executives maximize time spent in their inbox.
How to Stop Wasting Time On Email:
Audit your inbox to better understand what topics and senders are most important
Create folders dedicated to those specific topics and senders
Set up automations to sort your incoming email by those important topics and senders
Unsubscribe from any unnecessary emails and archive old emails
Choose a single time to respond to emails–remember this shouldn’t be in the morning!
Set aside a specific amount of time to dedicate to email, and don’t check it throughout the day
For a better breakdown of these steps, check out our inbox management guide here.
If all these best practices sound like too much–consider having one of 33Vincent’s Inbox Specialists do it for you!
Mistake #5 - Attending Unnecessary Meetings
Attending all of those meetings is another productivity pitfall. On average, companies spend around 15% of their total time in meetings. Middle management can spend up to 35% of their time in meetings, and executives spend a staggering 50% to 72% of their total work time in meetings! That’s just crazy.
For all those meetings, most people involved don’t think they’re effective. Thousands of executives were polled, and on average they considered 67% of meetings as “failures.”
How to Stop Wasting Time in Meetings:
Determine if the meeting is necessary
Does the meeting have a goal?
Does that goal need to be acted on now?
Are the right decision-makers going to be there?
Do you know what needs to be accomplished before the meeting?
Is there an agenda?
Is there a meeting leader?
If your answer is “no” to 2 or more of those questions, it could probably be an email or a collaborative google drive doc instead!
Ditch the powerpoint presentations
Don’t have meetings longer than 30 minutes
If there’s no value being added–decline the meeting or even leave. It might seem rude—but what’s really rude is wasting your incredibly valuable time. Many high-powered CEOs have been known to leave calls or meetings where nothing was being accomplished. Never hesitate to exercise your authority over your time.
Mistake #6 - Always Saying “Yes.”
It’s 10 am on a Tuesday, and you’re in the zone. You’ve blocked out your morning for deep work, and right now you’re absolutely crushing your most important task of the day...when suddenly a knock at the door cuts through your concentration. Before you can even respond, your co-founder walks in and approaches your desk asking, “Hey, do you have a minute?” The look on their face says that they have already assumed your answer is yes.
Unless it’s an extremely important situation that requires immediate attention, your answer should simply be “no.” Just like our last example, it’s vitally important to your productivity that you exercise your ability to safeguard your time, especially when you’re very focused on a task.
Just say you're very busy and that you can talk in a bit.
CEO Derek Sivers said it best: “We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out. Stop saying yes…. When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely!” — then say no.”
Mistake #7 - Allowing Yourself to Get Distracted with Web Surfing or Social Media
How many times has this happened to you?
You open a new browser tab to quickly look something up, or receive a notification on your phone from social media–only to spend the next hour distracted in the blink of an eye?
It happens to us all, but thankfully this is one of the easiest issues to avoid!
How to Avoid Digital Distractions:
Instead of immediately Googling something, write it down on a list for later
Remove social media notifications from your phone
Set a specific time to go over your search list and visit social media
If you’re really having trouble, consider using a site blocker during business hours
Mistake #8 - Avoiding difficult conversations or hard tasks
Many people often put off their hardest work until later, but this is a critical mistake! You need to “Eat the Frog” first.
Research shows that as the day goes on, we become more mentally fatigued, and our ability to exert our willpower drops. This is why so many people struggle with procrastination and end up feeling overwhelmed.
That early morning willpower would be much better utilized if spent on our hardest tasks. As an added bonus, remember from number 2 that we’re most alert and functioning at our highest potential during the morning too–which makes “eating the frog” easier.
This solution is easy, and if you followed our advice way back in number 1 above, you’ll have the willpower to do so.
How to Stop Avoiding Difficult Tasks and Eat The Frog:
Identify your frog (your most difficult task)
EAT IT! (complete it!)
Repeat every morning.
Mistake #9 - Confusing “Urgent” and “Important” - AKA “The Mere Urgency Effect”
Identifying your most important tasks is the key to prioritizing them. It sounds simple–just figure out what’s most important and hop to it...right? Wrong.
For years productivity experts have known that people have a hard time correctly deciding what to prioritize but weren’t sure why. As it turns out, recent studies show our brains are pretty much hardwired to incorrectly prioritize tasks! Psychologists have dubbed this phenomenon “The Mere Urgency” effect.
What is the Mere Urgency Effect?
The Mere Urgency Effect simply describes our tendency to focus on tasks that are time-sensitive, instead of those that are clearly more impactful. Merely knowing a task has an upcoming deadline makes our brains perceive it as more important than other impactful tasks. It’s the reason why we get sucked into responding to email or slack messages instead of being able to focus on more important work.
Data shows this effect is powerful, and causes people to make seemingly bizarre decisions about their priorities. But it gets worse!
The studies also showed that the Mere Urgency Effect is even more pronounced if we believe ourselves to be busy! (See experiment 4, page 12) It seems the busier you feel, the more attuned to time-sensitive tasks you are. If you think you’re a busy person, your ability to prioritize tasks correctly plummets even further!
How to Combat the Mere Urgency Effect
Now you might be thinking, “I’m busy! How do I prevent myself from making bad priority decisions like the people in the study!?”
Well, the good news is those same studies (experiment 3) also showed that simply reminding participants of which tasks were more important and had a higher impact helped lessen this effect–and we have a great way you can do this yourself.
We recently wrote an entire article about the Eisenhower Matrix, a tool that allows you to better differentiate and categorize the urgent vs. the important. It seems the only way to combat the Mere Urgency Effect is to remind ourselves of it, and using this tool is the perfect way to do so!
Read our deep-dive into the Eisenhower Matrix here. We go into great detail about how to divide the urgent from the important in this article using real-world examples. We also outline a strategy for how you can integrate this tool into your weekly schedule.
Download our free Eisenhower Matrix template here. (This PDF matrix isn’t like others you’ll find online, it’s digitally fillable and uses low-ink colors to be printer-friendly too!)
Mistake #10 - Doing Everything Yourself
Let’s face it, there’s only so much you can do in a day. Even if you’re incredibly efficient in your work, there is still a limit to how much you can complete and still have time left for yourself.
Delegation is crucial. Especially for business leaders and entrepreneurs. If you’re at the helm of an organization, captaining the ship, you should be focused on going the right direction– not making sure the decks are swabbed.
Your experience is best utilized when you are concentrating on tasks only you can complete. Everything else–even things you’re great at–should be delegated to someone you trust. This way you save crucial time and energy for your highest priority work. Even Former President Eisenhower knew this, and it’s an important part of his priority matrix we mentioned in number 9.
Many people don’t like to delegate, and why hand off a task when you know that you can do it perfectly? It seems risky.
What is definitely risky is wasting your precious time on less valuable tasks. By doing everything yourself, you are losing invaluable time and energy that could be spent on things that will produce a much higher impact!
Here are some free delegation resources to get you started!
Download our What To Delegate Guide here. This guide will help you review your work and better understand what can be delegated, and what you should focus on.Don’t forget our How To Delegate Template too! This simple template will help you remember all the crucial steps to delegating effectively–whether it’s a short-term assignment or a larger project.
Need Some Assistance? We’ve Got You Covered.
If your delegation list is getting long, the help you need is a click away! Our Executive Assistants are highly skilled and experienced professionals, and they’re ready to help you focus on your most valuable work.
We offer part-time EAs through our Virtual Executive Assistant Support service, and also full-time, direct-hire EAs through our Executive Assistant Search service as well.
33Vincent has many other resources to help you maximize your time and communication with your executive assistant.
