Being productive at your office or business premise is never that easy. With many things going on in your life, you may find it challenging to focus on your work and deliver results. When this happens, your boss will be knocking on your door, but you don't want that to happen to you, right? So, what should you do?

Increasing your productivity in the workplace should not be that challenging for you. In this article, we share some of the ten practical ways to boost your productivity at the workplace and meet your deadline.

1. Get the Right Tools

The tools you use at work play a significant role in your productivity, just like your skills and expertise. Without the right tools for the job you have on the desk, it's won't be easy to accomplish even the simplest tasks on time. Ensure you have all the equipment and software that you need to streamline your workflow.

Talk to your employer to provide you with all the tools you will need for communication and collaboration with the rest of the team. Most employers will go the extra mile to provide equipment and corporate gifts to ensure their employees deliver their best at work.

Having a comfortable chair, reliable computer, and instant messaging apps at your disposal may sound weird, but these simple tools will help you boost your productivity. In a nutshell, you must have all the essential tools you need to ensure you deliver the best results for any task.

2. Have a To-Do-List

Having a to-do-list or a daily plan can save you a lot for a greater part of your working day. If you want to ensure you tick all your pending tasks when working, you should first update your to-do-list.

Order your tasks based on their priority and simplicity. That means the most complicated and urgent tasks should appear at the top of your list. These are the tasks you want to ensure you complete as soon as you kick off your work.

Because we are all vulnerable to structural procrastination, it is always important to have a to-do-list t to remind us of what we should accomplish before sunset. A to-do-list keeps you focused on your work and helps you distance from all distractions that will eat your time. Always take between 15-20 minutes to write your to-do-list early in the morning or late in the evening.

When preparing your to-do-list, ensure you don't crowd it up. Space the list evenly. The more tasks you have on your list, the less productive you will be at the end. Always ensure you only include several items on your list that you can accomplish without compromising quality results.

3. Track Your Time

How much time you spend on a task determines how much you can achieve at the end of the day. Therefore, you should limit how you spend your time on tasks. Have a stopwatch to track how much time you are spending to accomplish a given task.

Additionally, you can create a time table for all tasks. Indicate on your roster, when to begin and end a task. When you track your time, you can easily meet your self-imposed deadlines and realize how much workload you accomplish every working day.

4. Keep off All Sorts of Distraction

Workplace distraction can stop you from meeting your set deadlines. Apart from having a comfortable office chair, you should also ensure you remove all other workplace distractions. Start by making your workstation tidy and fresh. Have an A/C to keep the atmosphere around you ample for work.

If you like visiting social media and conversing with your friends in the middle of the task, then you can install notification blocking apps on your phone or desktop. Ideally, it takes you at least 20 minutes to regain your focus when something distracts you in the middle of a task.

Your phone may be eating much of your time at work, and keeping it off from your desk will save you a lot. So, always turn off all notification that can keep you off work.

5. Take Short Breaks in the Middle of Tasks

Taking breaks in the middle of a task can boost your concentration. For instance, if you have a workload that will take you three hours to complete, you can segment the work into an hour each and take a 15-20 minute break between each work segment.

Studies have shown that taking short breaks when working on a long task improves your productivity and concentration. Therefore, to maintain a constant level of performance, ensure you take a break when working.

Most productive people don't work for long hours. Recent research by Florida State University shows that most elite performers work for less than 90 minutes. Those who work for more than two hours are less productive than those working below two hours.

When you work in intervals, you boost your work concentration and strive to deliver quality results for each task you accomplish.

6. Learn to Fight Work-Related Stress

Having stress in the workplace can affect your productivity. When you feel overwhelmed at work, it is important to focus on how you can relieve yourself of the excess stress. Learn to breathe smoothly while working.

This way, you send some oxygen to your brain and relieve yourself of excess tension building up in your body. When you are more stressed, you cannot think clearly, which hurts your productivity.

How you sit when working may also determine how you cope with stress at work. Always ensure you sit upright. Work against your body to maximize blood flow to your brain and the whole body.

7. Say 'No' When You Have To

When you have lots of tasks on your desk to accomplish, the last thing you want to do is catch up with a friend asking for your time out. Learn to say no when you can because this will help you avoid unnecessary commitments that eat your working time.

If you have already set your to-do-list and arranged yourself to accomplish certain tasks, all you have to do is commit to those tasks at hand.

Another trick: do not accept more projects if you have a fixed work routine. Be honest with your clients and let them know you are held up.

It is needless to add more tasks to your desk when you know you cannot meet the deadline. If you don't have enough time to fulfill a project, it is essential to say 'NO.' It's a way of being honest with yourself, team members, and employees.

8. Stop Multitasking

Most people believe that doing a couple of tasks at a go can help to improve productivity and meet strict deadlines. However, that is not true. Whenever you multitask, you are lowering your productivity and efficiency over time.

Psychologists have shown that attempting to accomplish multiple tasks will often result in lost time and efficiency. When you keep switching between tasks, you reduce your productivity by at least 40%.

If you want to ensure you remain more productive, you should always focus on completing one task. Give each task all your effort and focus more on delivering within the set deadline.

When you have many tasks to do on your list, you should not hesitate to delegate some of it to other employees when you feel like you are not going to meet your deadline.

9. Be proactive

When you report to work, it is always important to base your focus on the tasks you have on the desk. Don't allow any incoming phone calls, and emails determine how you accomplish your tasks. When you have many emails, messages, and phone calls coming your way, you must concentrate on your work first and then set aside some time to respond to them.

You should not let other people determine how your day is going to look like. That means you should not let anyone come between you and your work timetable.

Put off all sorts of distractions that will eat your time. It is important to have some work principles that will determine how you spend your time at work.

10. Get Enough Sleep

If you want to remain active and more productive for a significant part of the day, you should have enough sleep.

You may be having many things to do off work that stops you from getting enough night sleep. However, that should not stop you from sparing some time to take a rest. Sleep deprivation can hurt your work productivity.

Ideally, you should have at least 7 hours of sleep if you want to remain productive. If you don't get enough sleep at night, then taking a break during the day for a little nap will help you a lot.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot you should do to stay healthy and more productive at work. Apart from ensuring you have an ample work environment, you should also focus on removing all workplace distractions.

Get rid of all bad habits such as smoking, browsing social media at work, and hanging with toxic people. To ensure you are productive, you should focus on the ten tips we have shared here.