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17 Unproductive Habits to Let Go

Our daily life is full of unproductive habits and rituals that we execute whether on a conscious or unconscious level. This makes us less efficient and productive than we couldpotentially be.Obviously, just listing some avoidable habits is not enough. Because of this, Iencourage you to check out Donalds article on how to break bad habits. It gives agood foundation on how to actually start changing your habits from bad to good.Here are 17 unproductive habits that you should let go:1. Consuming the information youdont needUnsubscribe from as many mailing lists as you can. This way you can cut down theamount of incoming e-mails and prevent distraction.Also, stop watching news. If there is an event that is newsworthy, it will catchyou anyway (mostly by other people).2. Letting others to run your lifeSteve Jobs said it right: Your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life.You are the master of your life and it is a shame if you live your life by pleasing others.Naturally, it is wise to listen for advice from other people every now and then.However, ignore those people who say you cant reach your dreams, it is impossible to do something or thatyour vision is foolish.In your heart you know that it is not true.3. Reinventing the wheel

Before you start working on your task or project, prevent reinventing the wheel.Spend some time on research to find out if there are already solutions that helpyou to complete your task faster.4. Being perfectAlthough striving for perfection may be a noble principle for some, it is stilla huge time and energy waster.Instead of spending too much time ontweaking something, create a checklist to gothrough on your finalization phase. When you realize that all the items on yourlist are checked, you can finish your work andmove on.Not only are you relieved of your accomplishment, you will also give room for your brain to focus on other things instead.5. Letting television to overrun your passionWhen television is preventing you to take action on your passion, maybe it is ti

me to rethink your priorities.Save your TV show to your digital set-top box for later viewing instead. If youdo this operation a couple of times you will form a new success habit working onyour passion first and watching television second.6. MultitaskingStop working on multiple tasks at once. You are spreading your focus and efforton too many places at once. Although you might be able to proceed on many frontsat once, it is still a very slow and error-prone way ofworking.Instead, when you focus solely on onetask, you get all the work done much faster. You can put your mind fully to that task, complete it fully and move to the next task.7. Neglecting your bodyYou should take utmost care of your body. Feed it nutritious food, keep it fit b

y exercising on a regular basis and give it enough sleep.When doing these the quality of your life rises considerably, you feel good andin some cases you are able to prevent some diseases to break out. Also, your energy levels are higher andyou are more productive.8. Promising too muchControl your yeses. If you feel you have too much on your plate, be selfish and just say no! You have a right to decline from requests presented to you. Dont feelbad about saying no.If another person has a right to ask something from you, you have an equal rightto say no.

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9. Reacting to every distraction that comes alongThe number of distractions has grown radically over the last few years. The mainproblem is that you are expectedto be reachable all the time.When you are distracted, it causes unnecessary stress and makes you procrastinate on your work.Instead of being reachable, shut downthe communication devices when you want toconcentrate on your work. If this means shutting down your phone or even takingthe network cable out of your computer, then do it. This way you can cut down your temptations to be distracted too easily.10. Thinking that the more the betterMore is not necessarily better. In fact, in many cases the quality beats the quantity.Strive for mastering or focusing just the few, but not everything. For example,this could be focusing on just a subset of your clients that bring most of yourresults or mastering one skill well rather than trying to be good on 12 different things.Focusing on the things that bring the biggest rewards is a good strategy to be used your in life.11. Being late on appointmentsStop wasting time of other people. Not only are you giving a bad image out of yourself, you are also showing that you ignore the other persons timetables completely.Adjust your own schedule to, for example, 15 minutes earlier, so that you keep the appointment without any delay.

12. Staying quiet when you should askWhen you are stuck and you are not able to move forward with your task, speak up!Its not silly to ask a question if you dont know rather, the person who doesnt askfor help is silly.13. Starting a task but not finishingToo many people start a task and never finish it. Understandably the task may get postponed sometimes because of the reasons that are not dependent of you. Butin majority times this is not the case and it is yourresponsibility to finish the task.Make a plan on how to tackle the task: Break it into smaller pieces and executeyour plan on a daily basis. Eventually you realize that the task is done and youfeel very good about yourself!

14. Working tiredWhen you work tired, you are not able to focus on your work as well as ifyou were fully refreshed.If you feel tired, ponder yourself if youget enough sleep at night and adjust your sleeping time accordingly.Also, you can take a quick 15-20 minute nap to refresh yourself. Powernap is a great way to restart your day.15. Waiting others to take actionSometimes the only way to get something done is to do it yourself. If you are waiting others to take action on your behalf, you get disappointed because most probably nothing gets done.Take initiative, put your ideas into action and enjoy the fruits of your labor.16. Failing to admit mistakes and learning from them

Everybody makes mistakes. However, some people learn from their mistakes,while other people complain and neversee any positive sides in those situations.Use mistakes as a feedback and learning mechanism to improve your action further.17. Fixing the symptom instead ofthe root causeWhen you have a flat tire on your bicycle, you have two options to handle the situation.You can either pump air to the tire so that you can ride your bike for a while until the tire is flat again. On the other hand, you can change the tire to an intact one once and stop wasting time on pumping air to a flat one on a recurring

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basis.Strive for fixing the root cause insteadof just fixing the symptom. It may takemore time, but fixing the symptoms will most likely to take evenmore time.ConclusionAs you can see, there are lots of habits on our daily lives that could be improved or replaced with a better one.If there is a one single area to focus on this list, it is definitely the item #7. When you make your body feel good on all three levels (nutrition, exercise and sleep), it is much easier to changeother parts of your life too.Just take one unproductive habit, crush it and then move on to the nextone.