You are running late for work. To make haste, you decide to dress up casually, instead of getting your hands tangled in a more exorbitant affair. You reach your work desk, only to be greeted by a messy pile of jumble waiting for you. As you are already falling behind the schedule, you try to multitask and work without taking breaks. Despite all that, you fail to complete all the tasks assigned to you. Did you know why? Because you are doing all the wrong things that you need to avoid at work. Yes, you read that right! To organize things better, here’s everything you need to steer clear of:
1. Casual Dressing
If you are not one of those lucky ones who have the liberty to dress casually to office, it’s time to stow away all jeans and tees and take up to a more formal ensemble. Not only does sporting an inappropriate attire make you feel unprofessional, it also makes others around you uncomfortable, especially in a corporate ambiance. Even if you love to dress casually, try to blend it with your formal attire instead of dressing up casually as a whole. Although, casual dressing does no harm, why force the hand of higher management to take some action against you.
2. Missing Deadlines
With so many projects running concurrently and each one having a different deadline, it is hard to keep track. As a result, you start missing deadlines. If you have a viable reason or you miss a deadline once in a blue moon, you might get away with it, but if it becomes a habit, you might lose your job sooner than you can blink. With a host of credible online task management software at your beck and call, not only can you keep track of all deadlines but also get more organized and complete projects before their specified deadlines.
3. Non Professional Behavior
“Professional is not a label you give yourself. It’s a description you hope others will apply to you”—David Maister
You might think that you are not putting a foot wrong at work but ask a co-worker, and they might choose to differ. Coming late to work, taking work lightly, whiling away the time browsing the web or your social media feed, or delegating tasks assigned to you to others, and a host of such activities come under the notorious umbrella of non-professional behavior. Yes, you might be a bit surprised with the last one because we usually consider delegating tasks as a good thing, but if you keep pushing your work on to others, it might earn you a bad reputation.
4. Juggling Multiple Things At Once
“The quickest way to do many things is to do one thing at a time.”—Christopher Westra
I honestly cannot blame you if seeing multitasking on this list made you spill over your evening tea. Unfortunately, research has its reasons. According to a research conducted at Stanford University, multitasking only serves to decrease your productivity, efficiency, and performance instead of giving it a boost. Research conducted at University of London shows that multitasking could damage your brain and reduce your IQ levels.
Our brains are hard-wired to focus on one task at a time. When we multitask, we are only switching focus from one task to another and this switching leads to nothing else than a wastage of precious work hours. While our competitive workplace environments prevent us from bidding adieu to multitasking altogether, you can at least tune it down a notch.
5. Biting off more than You Can Chew
Employers and higher management want you to pay heed to their every whim. As an employee, saying yes to anything that we are asked to do comes naturally to us, even if it threatens to wreak havoc on our work-life balance. Knowing when to say yes and when to firmly shake your head is indispensable to maintaining your sanity. More importantly, if you are saying yes to everything, you will put yourself under a lot of pressure. This will eventually result in work related stress and employee burnout. If that work related stress stretches over a long period, it can have serious repercussions, such as health issues or even an employee quitting in exasperation. Even if you have a lot on your plate, you can automate mundane tasks and focus on important ones. This will reduce your workload to a certain degree.
6. Gossiping
Whether you like it or not, almost every workplace is ridden with this nuisance. We have all been guilty of it at one point or another. If you find yourself the brunt of vilifications or lead such vile groups yourself, it’s time to retrace your steps. Not only is it wasting your time, it can sow the seeds of discord and jealously among team members, which is in no way beneficial for employees involved or the organization as a whole. Team cohesion is critical for success, so do not let these gossips destroy it. The better your team gels in with each other, the more chances you have of achieving your goals.
7. Yelling
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”—Thomas Paine
While yelling, bellowing, and obnoxious behavior is not something you thought about encountering in a corporate environment, nobody is above it, it seems. It is hard to keep your temper in check, and many people start shouting to vent out some of that anger piling up inside when they feel frustrated. Such fits of tantrums can hamper your productivity, in addition of that of others around you. Additionally, it makes people avoid you instead of opening up to you. Slowly, this behavior can lead to isolation, making it a challenge for an employee to survive in today’s team centric workplace culture. Instead of resorting to roaring, try to find a suitable solution to the problem, while keeping your team in the loop.
Which of these things do you avoid at work and Why? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.