How to Ruin Your Work Routine

Here’s how you can make every productivity tip you implement pointless :))

All jokes’ aside, when you think about it, all the productivity tips that you implement are going to be pointless when you do the things that end up ruining it all.

Think about how your healthy eating tips are pointless when you’re just going to eat mostly junk food.

Think about how your exercise is pointless when that’s the only time you move around all day.

Same with productivity.

We can implement the best productivity tips in the world, but can ruin it in an instant by doing the things that … ruin it.

That’s what this blog post is going to be about how to ruin your work routine. If you’ve read my blog post on how to ruin your morning routine, this will be familiar to you, except it’s about your work routine this time.

Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way:

1 – Distractions

Obviously, distractions have got to go on this list.

There are a whole range of distractions, from distractions that a five year old would know it’s a distraction, to a distraction that is quite hidden.

The distractions that a five year old would know is:

• Your phone – obviously! I mean everyone talks about how your phone is a big fat distraction. In fact, many of the older generations blame the phone for literally everything.
• Social media – obviously! A lot of the older generations blame social media for everything as well. I mean, you’ve also heard this from many productivity people as well. Social media is a huge distraction when you’re trying to get some good effective work done.
• TV – obviously! Every single productivity blogger or YouTube has mentioned how distracting the TV is. Even a five year old knows that the TV is a distraction because it’s going to keep them hooked for hours.

Honestly, the list goes on and on. You can probably think of even more distractions that are obvious.

But then there’s another type of distraction. This is called the hidden distractions.

Hidden Distractions are distractions that you wouldn’t initially think of as distractions. Here are a few examples:

• Emails – yes, they are important! However, I am sure that you have much more important things to do than check your email. Yes it’s important to get back to people, but it’s more important to first prioritise the tasks that are more important for you.
• Chores – okay wait? What do I mean by this? What do I mean that chores are not important? Not having a clean house is not important? Not doing my laundry is not important? – Okay no, I’m not saying that they are not important because they are…. but they can be delayed. Especially if you have important assignments, tasks, and projects that have a deadline, those are the things that you want to take care of first.

In one of my past blog posts called How to Procrastinate (the right way), I emphasised that procrastination is not just choosing to watch a TV show on Netflix over doing your work, or scrolling on social media and delaying starting your work.

Procrastination can also be doing those lower value tasks that are important but not urgent, such as as your emails and your chores. While they both are important, they are not urgent at that moment. By doing those tasks over your more important tasks, you are actually tricking yourself into believing that you’re being productive.

You have to think about whether something is actually making you productive or is tricking your mind into thinking you’re being productive?

When it comes to anything that are of lower value compared to your most important tasks, you want to resist those distractions because any distraction does immediately ruin your work routine.

What to do instead: Try your very best to limit all distractions! The best way to go about it is to create a Not-to do list! It’s like a to-do list except you tick things off every time you haven’t done something, and those includes the things that distract you! Read the linked blog post to learn how to develop your to-do list!

2 – NOT having a good morning routine

I’ll be straight up with this reason – a good morning sets you up for your day.

So if you have a good morning, it sets you up for a good day. If your morning felt rushed and intense, it sets you up for a rushed and intense day.

If you started off your morning feeling stressed, during the day you’re also going to feel stressed.

If you had a morning where you snoozed the alarm many times, because the night before you slept late, you’re probably going to be tired in that day. When you feel tired, you’re probably not going to work as effectively in your work routine.

If you had a morning where you didn’t take the time to fill you up mentally, physically, and intellectually, then you’re probably not going to be in the best headspace during your work routine.

That’s why it’s important to develop a good and effective morning routine filled with habits to set you up for a good day. You want to start your day growing yourself mentally, feel better physically, and enhance your mindset intellectually. It will then lead to a work routine that will be effective as well.

Hence, having a good morning routine is more than just having a good morning and starting your day well. Having a good morning routine is the stepping stone to a better day.

Read my past blog post on how to ruin your morning routine to see how you can ruin your morning and stop it from happening!

What to do instead: Develop a good morning routine! Read my blog post on essential routines for personal growth and go to morning routine to see how you can develop a effective morning routine to set you up for the day!

3 – Not Having a Clear Headspace

Okay, so this continues on from number two where we mentioned to have a good morning routine to give you a clearer headspace.

Imagine knowing that many people spend their first moments of their day going through their phone. And not just going through their phone, they go on social media, they read the news… they just fill up their mind with so much negativity.

They may or may not think that it’s not really affecting them, but the truth is, our subconscious mind takes note.

If you remembered what I had mentioned about Hidden Distractions in number one, one of those hidden distractions includes the social media and the news (or really, anything negative), that you have consumed earlier in the day.

Yes, you don’t have to actually be going on social media or reading the news right in the middle of your work routine. But if you did it earlier in the day, and you can’t stop thinking about what you saw and read, then it just became a big distraction that you didn’t even know about.

That’s why we mentioned in the previous point to have a good morning routine built with good habits, most especially with habits for your mindset!

If you wouldn’t eat junk food first thing in the morning, why would you let the first “food” that you consume for your mind be junk as well? Our diet is not just the food that we eat but everything we read, watch, listen to, and even who we surround ourselves with.

So instead of letting the first thing your eyes see are the news and social media, read more motivational, educational, and inspirational material.

Instead of letting the first thing your ears hear be the news, or even songs about breakups or feeling hurt and sad, listen to more podcasts where you learn something from it.

You want to let the first thing you consume give you a clear headspace before you tackle your day, and it’s very easy to implement. You don’t want to let those little things distract you from your work without even realising it.

What to do instead: Have a podcast list that you listen to before you listen to music. At least 3 podcasts where you either learn something you want to know more about, or just a general motivational and uplifting podcast that can help you through whatever it is you’re doing!

You can also read the blog post on digital habits to control your digital life, instead of letting your digital life control you!

4 – Not having a Neat Workspace

Now we are going about our external environment, the place where you’re going to be doing your work.

I bet you can agree with this, but this is quite an obvious one.

If the environment we’re trying to work in is filled with clutter and mess, it’s going to be hard to motivate yourself to work.

Whether the environment is cluttered physically or digitally (e.g. too many tabs opened up, unorganized files), it’s going to be hard to remain focus and productive.

That’s why, it makes sense to need to work in a fresh and neat environment where you feel motivated to work, you feel like you want to work, and continue to stay focused on working.

Examples of a fresh and neat environment could be your desk at home (obviously) or even going to a local cafe or library to do work, because you know that those areas are going to be neat.

Personally for me, I prefer to work in local cafes when I get the chance (well not right now because of the lockdown). But when it’s not lockdown, I enjoy working in local cafes because I love the environment there. I feel so motivated to work.

The same with being in a library as well. When you see other people working in the library, it reminds you to work as well. Especially being at my university library, I feel motivated to study when all I see around me are people studying.

So choose wisely the environment that you are going to work in. Allow that it will be a space where you feel pumped and excited to work… especially if the tasks that you are doing are not really what you want to do but you have to do them.

What to do instead: Well, what’s the opposite of having a messy workspace? A neat workspace! Take some time to clear out your desk or whatever space you’re working on. If you want to, you can go to a cafe or a library where you know the spaces are kept neat.

5 – Multi-Tasking

I used to be a big multi-tasker. I really believed that I was being productive because I was getting things done faster.

However, out of all the things that I mentioned that ruin your work routine, this is the most detrimental one. Not just to your work routine, but to your overall work quality.

Yes, you get things done quicker, but you sacrifice your overall work quality.

When you multi-task, not only do you sacrifice the quality for the one task you’re doing, you’re sacrificing the work quality for the other tasks that you are multi-tasking on.

You are better off working on things one at a time, even if it takes longer.

FOCUS is the key to your work routine. FOCUS is the most important thing in your work routine, and multi-tasking is just a killer to focus. It’s hard to get focused when you’re trying to do multiple things at once.

What to do instead: Set out your schedule to work on one task at a time, so that you can set aside the time to work on all your tasks individually instead of all at once.

6 – Not “eating that frog”

Okay, you will only understand what that means if you’ve read Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog (not an affiliate link, I just really like the book and this summary that pretty much summarises the concepts of the book really well!)

I’ll summarise briefly for you what eating that frog means…

Eat that Frog means to let your first task that you work on in your day be your hardest task. That’s what is going to set you up for maximum productivity in your day.

How many times have we done this, where we work on our easiest tasks first to set yourself up for your day, so you feel more motivated to do your harder tasks?

However, when you think about it, by working on your easiest tasks first thing, you just spent your most efficient energy working on things that doesn’t require much energy. So by putting your hardest task last, by the time you get to it, you run out of energy to work on it.

For example, let’s say that your hardest task of the day is that big research assignment. But you decided to start your day easy by checking your emails, answering your messages, posting on social media (for business purposes). Those are tasks that are important and easy tasks to do.

BUT by the time you get to work on your big research assignment, you run out of energy to do it. Then you may not even want to work on that assignment anymore because you just don’t feel motivated to do it. This was because we used up all that energy doing tasks that are easy to do and doesn’t require a lot of brain power.

That’s why, you want to do it the other way around. You want to “eat that frog”. The longer we delay “eating that frog”, the harder it is going to be to start it…. so just start it!

Work on your hardest task of the day first, then you actually feel more accomplished that way. You feel more motivated to work on your other tasks, accomplish more things, because you already got the hard thing out of the way… you ate that frog!

So by not eating that frog you actually lose the opportunity to have a very effective work routine in your day.

What to do instead: Well, the opposite of not eating the frog is eating that frog… so eat that frog! Decide what your hardest task is, and let that task be the task you’re going to work on first.

7 – Not taking breaks in between work sessions

I saved another obvious one for last.

Remember the times when taking breaks were an absolute no-go to society? Remember when resting was looked down upon, when resting was a killer to our productivity?

When in reality, the truth all along was that taking no break loses our opportunity to be more productive… yes I know, ironic.

Many of my other readers would know that I love to mention this analogy…. human beings are like our phones.

Just like how a phone can’t function properly if the battery is low, human beings can’t work as effectively if our “battery” is low.

That’s why with our phone, before we even let our phone battery die, we charge it. I mean, even when people see their phone on 80% they begin charging already. If we don’t let our phone battery die, don’t let our “batteries” die as well. Why don’t we do the same thing for us? Why don’t we also charge our batteries when we need to?

It’s okay to be unproductive ‘once in a while’ because it will actually give us more drive and motivation to continue to do the things that we regularly do. As long as we are intentional with our rest, and intentionally take some time to reset and recharge.

What to do instead: Break up your work hours/sessions into certain time blocks, and in between those time blocks you take your breaks. Even set in your schedule a day where you’re being completely unproductive!

Now let’s get to work!

Now that I’ve mentioned all the things that can ruin your work routine, you can now take action to make sure that they don’t ruin your work routine!

Take it easy on yourself, especially if some of those things are a bit challenging to move on from. Stay kind to yourself, remember that it’s always progress over perfection. As long as you making steps forward (even if it’s just the smallest baby steps) it’s better than staying in the same place!

Whatever work you use a work routine for, it’s important to spend time in improving the ways that you can work most effectively. Whether that’d be through other productivity tips, or by letting go of some productivity habits that weren’t so effective.

Either way, continue to work hard and smart, and remember to take it easy on yourself!

-Lauren 😊

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How to Ruin Your Morning Routine!

The Best Way to Stop Distractions!

How to Procrastinate (The Right Way)

How to Have Better Digital Habits (and stop that distraction to your work!)

Essential Routines for Personal Growth

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