Whether it is inspired by employee happiness, or it is based on the creativity and the ability of teams to think out-of-the-box, or it is based on detailed analysis of the production process and thorough process optimizations, productivity has been and will remain a keyword in the HR strategy in negotiations with top management.

More than ever, in the context of working from home, it still is one of the most debated topics by employers and does not seem to have exhausted its growth resources even now.

But how do we stay productive now, when there is something distracting at every corner of the keyboard? Here they are myths to which we need to pay more attention.

You think you are focused for a longer period of time than you really are.

The truth is that we underestimate the number of interruptions we experience during the day. We check our phone every 5-10 minutes, we scroll on Facebook every half hour, a few appreciations on Instagram… we respond to WhatsApp messages… Because there’s still enough time until the end of the day….

In fact, this is not the case: that piece of maximum concentration becomes narrower with each extra-activity we carry out.

The solution: Things are solved in drastic decisions, and rigor in prioritization is the first and most important step we can take. So: without a phone on your desk, without WhatsApp Web and without Facebook Messenger when you are working on projects that need maximum concentration.

You think multitasking is your strong point.

Well… Unfortunately, neither you nor anyone else can shine on multitasking. We wrote more about this in one previous article, but here we resume the essence: Multi-taskers have only the illusion of productivity because what they do, in fact, is anything but productivity.

Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT, destroyed the myth of multitasking in one interview granted to NPR News in 2008, saying it is impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time. Period. What we do is move our attention from one task to another with incredible speed, and that is task-switching or task-shifting. But this speed kills our resources. Miller points out, “Going from one task to another, you think you’re watching everything going on around you at the same time. But in fact, you can’t do it. ”

In reality, our brain is forced to move from one cognitive process to another. All of these tasks use the same brain part, so it’s impossible to find resources to do two things at once. Let’s bet on single-tasking and let’s leave multi-tasking for the generations of robots to come (this if people manage to program them for multi-tasking).

You think you can do everything by yourself.

We often destroy productivity by trying to do too much, by ourselves. One of the secrets of productivity is to delegate or involve in our work colleagues who have the skills that we need to solve tasks. Together we do things faster and better. So let’s work more often in a team and less alone.

Mentally you refuse to stop at just a few basic things.

We are all looking for that big hack to revolutionize our world of productivity. But, let’s be serious, small but consistent steps can have satisfactory results until then. We shouldn’t downplay the importance of to-do lists, intensive focus sessions, or the fact that your phone should always have notifications turned off.

Don’t underestimate the harm that interruptions do.

Short breaks to check your phone or social media channels do more harm than you think. psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about the importance of flow, about the state of mental productivity of maximum productivity, about rhythm and about how the destruction of this rhythm dramatically decreases productivity. So let’s say it again… it’s better without when you work….

Do you think that the number of breaks is closely related to productivity.

We tend to believe that productivity comes from marathon sessions, but in reality, this is not the case. But how many times do we not end our day feeling that we have achieved almost nothing?! That we ran everywhere, and tomorrow we will have to take it all from the beginning? Every day, the same story … Pomoro technique proposes to divide the time into 25-minute intervals in which to focus on a single task. In addition to increasing the ability to concentrate and implicitly productivity, every 25 minutes of work you can take a 5-minute break.

Instead of closing: Productivity needs a lot of encouragement and consistency, but the mix of resources and tools is different for each of us. Whether it’s small changes or changes that upset the whole system of work, what works for us may not work as well for others. But it can be a source of inspiration and we would be happy to share with you what you do to stay productive.