Productivity in work - how to improve?

jc2008

Bit of a strange one.

In a graduate job for about 15 months - small, very busy team in a large company.

After a year the workload has increased in amount and difficulty, I'm expected to handle multiple workloads/clients/workloads etc. While it is good experience and I'm learning loads, I do notice the hours getting longer, and it seems like I've become more unproductive at work, which is turn leading to even longer hours as deadlines have to be met etc - it's a bit of a vicious circle tbh.

It's not that I am browsing the web or looking at my mobile or anything, while at my desk, I am doing work. However, it seems like I'm constantly underestimating how long things will take me. I think it might be related to multi-tasking - I try to work on one thing at a time but in the back of my mind I'm thinking about other pieces of work, in addition to dealing with constant ad-hoc email queries (which can take nearly 30mins to answer as I need to look into files / pull together tables), reading emails as they come in even if I don't have time to reply until later in the day etc.

Does anyone have this problem, or any tips to help improve productivity in work? I'd love to improve my focus so I can get through my workload in reasonable hours. There is a staying-late culture in work which I think doesn't help either - I think it's easy to be (unknowingly) less productive if you know you'll be staying late anyway.

My workload is comparable to other people's, so it's not like I'm getting a disproportionate amount of work - it's a very busy team and everyone works hard / long hours if necessary. From talking to managers, they say my work is good and feedback is overall positive, with the main constructive criticism that I need to be better at communicating progress / alerting management sooner of any potential delays in workload that may arise (e.g. due to multiple deadlines).

Manach

Perhaps this advice is not exactly what the OP might envision, but have they considered reducing their work? In that the experience of teams having more work than hours in the day in one sense is a great thing - a sign of a thriving enterprise - on the another there is the question of time spent in the office. Outside the 40 hour week (AFAIR reading) the productivity of a person goes down in the long term as tiredness sets in with the end result of burnout.

So instead of looking at individual productivity, a word with management to more accurately plan one's tasks and time might be in order?

Goat Paddock

Manach wrote: »

Perhaps this advice is not exactly what the OP might envision, but have they considered reducing their work? In that the experience of teams having more work than hours in the day in one sense is a great thing - a sign of a thriving enterprise - on the another there is the question of time spent in the office. Outside the 40 hour week (AFAIR reading) the productivity of a person goes down in the long term as tiredness sets in with the end result of burnout.

So instead of looking at individual productivity, a word with management to more accurately plan one's tasks and time might be in order?

Saying this to management could be construed as criticism might not go down well. Seems to hard to find a salaried job where you do an honest forty hours week and that's that nothing more?