Productivity Increases When These 3 Science-backed Tips Are Followed

If you're struggling to keep up with your work, and life in general, you're not alone.

In fact, many of us struggle with staying motivated and productive.

And whether it is stress, finding yourself overworked, or you're simply not receiving enough "you time", we can all easily fall into unproductive slumps.

If this sounds like something you're currently struggling with, never fear.

There are simple and easy steps to get yourself back to your most productive self.

Pull Out of an Unproductive Slump with These 3 Research-Backed Tips

What can you do to bounce back from an unproductive patch?

Try these tips out.

1. Take a break.

When you're deep in a task or project, ideas flow easily and the hours appear to slip away. But, unfortunately, this state of mind doesn't last forever.

Stretch yourself beyond a flow state or productivity zone and you'll no doubt begin to feel unfocused, demotivated, and perhaps even a little irritable.

So, what changes?

Well, basically the human mind wasn't designed to be used for extended periods of time.

Sure, our brains are amazing, they allow us to do incredible things. However, concentrating intently on a single task for hours or days at a time simply wasn't what our brains were designed to do.

With this in mind, it's super important to understand the necessity of taking regular breaks.

In fact, there's a ton of evidence to back this up.

One study explores the idea of decision fatigue, pointing out that the need to make frequent decisions can not only wear down your willpower but also your reasoning ability. The study concluded that, with regular breaks, decision fatigue is less likely to set in and procrastination is kept to a minimum.

Another study explored the idea that prolonged attention on a single task hindered performance and that diversions or small breaks helped restore motivation and task-based focus.

And indeed this was found to be true.

The study's findings suggest that with brief mental breaks focus was easier to maintain and long-term motivation towards a task was sustained for longer periods.

2. Break down tasks into smaller portions.

Ticking off tasks from a checklist feels good, right?

That's because accomplishing something works on those feel-good happy hormones, or more accurately neurotransmitters, we call dopamine.

Dopamine interacts with our reward system, pleasuring us with feelings of not only bliss and happiness but, perhaps more importantly, gifting us with enhanced motivation and concentration.

From this perspective, a great way to boost your productivity, and pull yourself out of a productivity slump, is to break down large tasks into seemingly more manageable smaller portions.

And there is, of course, evidence to back this up.

It's possible to use your brain's reward system to your advantage simply by setting small goals and then achieving them.

In fact, a study found that breaking large tasks into, what they termed microtasks, results in higher quality outcomes and a workflow that is more resilient to interruptions.

The act of ticking off a small task is linked with a flood of dopamine, an occurrence your brain craves and will want to be repeated.

Use this to your advantage.

Associate achieving small goals, that eventually lead to large achievements, with a flood of dopamine and your brain won't be able to get enough of being productive.

3. Change up your environment

Sometimes, all it takes to boost your productivity is a simple change of scenery.

According to research, your ability to change habits is more likely to succeed when your environment is altered. In other words, our brains are brilliant at connecting the environment with a particular behavior. And if that behavior is unproductive, then a good change of scenery is in order.

If you find yourself frequently throwing your hands up in the air and saying to heck with it all, take a look around at your surroundings.

For remote workers, this can be as simple as changing rooms of your house or heading out to work in a cafe.

For those that work from an office, your best bet is to freshen things up a bit. 

Take a look around, what can you change?

Try cleaning up any mess within your workspace, move items around, buy yourself an indoor plant, or even change the direction your laptop or computer screen faces for a bit of a change of perspective.

All of these differences will help you break bad habits, move away from unproductive behavior, and reset your motivational ticker.

Final thoughts:

No matter who you are or what you do with your professional time, we all, at times, fall into productive slumps.

Thankfully, with these science-backed tips, it should be easier to fight off unproductiveness, stay consistent in your workplace efforts, keep on top of large work-based tasks, and, most importantly, stay motivated.

As someone much wiser than myself once said, "Productivity is less about what you do with your time and more about how you manage your mind."