The new year is a great time to adopt career-boosting habits. You can improve productivity, strengthen performance, and increase career success.
Elevating your efficiency and effectiveness helps you attain your professional goals. The following four habits can help you stay focused, organized, and motivated.
Practice Daily Self-Care
Clarify what self-care means to you. Examples include daily exercise, healthy eating, regular breaks, and adequate sleep. Then, develop specific goals to incorporate self-care into your daily routine. For instance, “exercise for 30 minutes daily” or “sleep for 7 hours nightly.”
Consider using a planner or goal-tracking app to maintain motivation and track your success. Incorporating daily self-care helps increase your focus, productivity, and health.
Automate Tasks
Using technology to handle repetitive tasks increases your productivity. These activities free up time to handle more complex tasks.
For instance, if you create frequent reports or presentations, you might develop templates with your company’s branding and layout. Or, for more customized tasks, you could use a tool such as Zapier to automate tasks between software programs or services.
Minimize Distractions
Distractions interrupt your work and lower your productivity. Because the brain cannot multitask, you need significant time and energy to refocus on a task and get back on track.
Conversely, removing distractions increases your efficiency. Minimal switching between tasks helps complete complex, challenging tasks requiring sustained focus and concentration.
Identifying and eliminating or reducing distractions helps you accomplish more in less time. For instance, you can turn off phone and computer notifications and ask colleagues and coworkers not to interrupt you unless there is an emergency. Increasing efficiency lets you focus on other important activities.
Prioritize Professional Development
Make continuous learning and development a top priority. Ongoing knowledge and skill development strengthens your qualifications for more senior scientific or technical roles.
Set clear, measurable goals for professional development. For instance, “Invest 2 hours every Tuesday afternoon reading industry-related blog posts and articles.” Or, “Engage in a weekly online course through LinkedIn Learning.”
Schedule time to attain your goals. Ensure you dedicate this time to professional development.
Find a New Job for the New Year
Work with Element Staffing to find your next scientific or technical career opportunity. Visit our job board to see which roles match your goals, skills, and interests today.
