Nothing sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits. They are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don't even notice the damage they're causing. Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative, and stifle your performance. Getting control of your bad habits is critical, and not just for productivity's sake. A University of Minnesota study found that people who exercise a high degree of self-control tend to be much happier than those who don't, both in the moment and in the long run.

Some bad habits cause more trouble than others, and the nine that follow are the worst offenders. Shedding these habits will increase your productivity and allow you to enjoy the positive mood that comes with increased self-control. 1. Impulsively surfing the internet. It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would be. When you click out of your work because you get an itch to check the news, Facebook, a sports score, or what have you, this pulls you out of flow. This means you have to go through another 15 minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow.

2. Perfectionism. Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming characters and plot, and they even write page after page that they know they'll never include in the book. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it's time to get started because we know that our ideas aren't perfect and what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don't get started and give your ideas time to evolve? Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: "You can edit a bad page, but you can't edit a blank page."

3. Meetings. Meetings gobble up your precious time like no other. Ultra-productive people avoid meetings as much as humanly possible. They know that a meeting will drag on forever if they let it, so when they must have a meeting they inform everyone at the onset that they'll stick to the intended schedule. This sets a clear limit that motivates everyone to be more focused and efficient.

Nothing sabotages your productivity quite like bad habits. They are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don't even notice the damage they're causing. Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative, and stifle your performance. Getting control of your bad habits is critical, and not just for productivity's sake.

Nine bad habits you must break to be more productive

Shour Ousman