Tips to increase employee productivity

An article in 2010 in the New York times cited a study form Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killings, who used an iPhone app to contact roughly 2,200 individuals asking them what they were doing at the moment, and how they were feeling. They received over 240,000 replies from this activity. The results: the people who reported the highest levels of pleasure were having sex, when contacted. Surprisingly 99.5% people were not having sex. They reported that their minds were wandering. This actually means they were not focused in whatever they were doing. Also those who focused reported higher levels of happiness than those who were not.  

Why are we not so focused? 

The answer to this question and how to remain focused can be found on the first few pages of the HBR August 2014-January 2015 edition.

According to me, (in agreement with the article quoted above) we are not focused because we don’t want to be. Unless an individual finds something motivating or interesting enough to be spent time on, the individual tends to not focus. Thus our minds wander, and we end up day dreaming. Some people rely on caffeine to get their focus back. And some others jump on to the internet to get a break, and then get back to what they were doing.

According to a study (HBR-Aug2014-Jan15) People spend 30-40% of their time at work attending to unplanned interruptions. Then, some more time is spent trying to get back their focus. This is because the number of tools of interruption is very high. Even during a meeting it’s hard for employees to not check their smart phones, and not to stop their minds form wandering. They think of everything except, for what is being discussed at the meeting.

It’s not that we humans can’t focus. We can. And we can do justice to being focused. The reason why people avoid focus is because, staying focused is hard work.

“Nature tends towards disorder. Focus imposes order. So focus requires energy. It requires work. It can hurt. And people often avoid work and pain.”- Edward Hallowell        

So what’s to do with this broken focus? When at work, if the mind is distracted, turn off the distraction. I mean turn off the gadget. The mobile or the computer. One can go to the lobby and just sit and breathe. If there’s problem, find a solution till the bulb shines above your head. 

Get involved. Persist.

Spend as much time as you can on the three most important things, 

1- what you are good at, 

2-what you like to do,

3- what people will pay you to do. 

At the intersection of these three areas lies the area of happiness and the order to disorder. When work is motivating and interesting one WANTs to go to work every morning, getting stuck in the long line of loud traffic. One wants to be able to sit late and work over a project. When work becomes pleasure, you will work even if it hurts. Why? Because you are focused.

To ensure the employees are focused they should have meetings, avoiding anything that is distracting. The conference room should be painted sliverish-gray, or blue, or green or purple, to bring good thoughts and great ideas to the minds at the table.

Companies could have a brief meeting every 2 hours about everything but work. Talk about music, art, movies, children, pets, anything but work. This would calm the minds of your team and help them come back quicker to what they were assigned to do. The risk here is too much of fun talk may never bring them back. The time of such meetings should be short and memorable, but never long and something for them to day dream about.

Laugh. Laughing is that cure to any irritation or disorder. Where there is laughter there is health. To ensure that the minds of your team are healthy, invest on ensuring that they laugh, as much as they can. This can also be considered a physical exercise. Hire a stand-up artist to office one day. Surprise them. Make them laugh. After all the laughing, focus comes automatically.

Organizing your mind and your team’s minds will bring in a good payoff at the end of the year. Adding high quality focus at workplaces is a great place for HR managers to start working on.

After all, good focus has the power to grow your business.