7 Mindless Habits That Are Making You Unproductive At Work

Adam Stiles, who invented browser tabs, previously explained to HuffPost that some of us cannot handle the freedom of unlimited tabs: “The invention gives people freedom. Perhaps it gives some people too much freedom.”

If you find 20 open tabs stressful and distracting, use tab organizers like One Tab that turn all of your tabs into a list, or background managers like Tab Auto Close and Tab Wrangler that automatically close tabs after too much inactivity.

“Similar to text messaging, an impulse develops to view incoming updates, and that repeated habit can interrupt focus big-time, as well as cause scatterbrain,” said life coach Shanita Liu.

To break this habit, “set boundaries with teammates so that they know when your focus cannot be interrupted,” Liu said. If your company uses Slack, try manually updating your status to “away.” If your co-workers have access to your calendar, block your calendar with “non-interruption” times, so they know you should not be contacted, Liu suggested.

To be a better problem-finder, don’t look for solutions right away. First, ask yourself if solving it is your role, and welcome questions. Menon said an exercise she gives students involves asking them to brainstorm only questions about a problem, so they are “engaged in the process of finding the problem” instead of jumping to find answers.

Norma Reyes, a career coach who works with women to help them gain clarity on their next career moves, said one mindless habit she sees professionals repeat is when they believe they have mastered a part of their jobs and get stuck in a “fixed mindset” in which they become more resistant to change at work and use up their time and energy to fight it.

“This can be maybe just nitpicking at the changes, maybe even rallying people around the changes, versus seeing that the change is necessary for a different reason,” Reyes said.

7. You schedule unnecessary meetings.

Forty-seven percent of workers surveyed by Salary.com in 2012 said “too many meetings” was their top workplace distraction. If you have a voice in how your company’s meetings are handled, question why you are having them and solicit regular feedback from attendees about length and usefulness.

As meetings researcher Steven G. Rogelberg previously told HuffPost, “One of the things that I advocate is that a leader can think about their agenda not necessarily as topics, but as questions to be answered.”