Why Is It Important to Improve Productivity? (Explained for Beginners)

Understanding the importance of productivity in your life is essential and makes it easier for you to set and achieve your goals. If you’re responsible for a team or running a business, you must ensure they run as efficiently as possible. Higher productivity levels in every aspect of life ensure better utilization of available resources.  

Personal productivity impacts the quality and quantity of results you produce. Thus, it’s crucial to improve productivity because higher levels of productivity translate to a better personal and professional life. It allows you to achieve much more in a given period. 

Thus, with better productivity, you reap the benefits of having more focus, energy, and time for other pursuits, including self-care activities.

Let’s dive into the top 20 reasons why improving your productivity is essential. 

1. Helps You Align Your Professional and Personal Goals

Improved productivity aligns with your professional and personal goals. It keeps you happier and motivated while allowing you to achieve meaningful milestones. In addition, involving your co-workers with the same interests boosts your productivity. 

According to Harvard Business Review, creating strong work relationships at the office improves efficiency. You’re seven times more likely to engage and get more work done entirely. Also, if you have vague personal goals, setting professional goals that align with them creates better chances of productivity and satisfaction. 

Therefore, you need to determine the three most important personal goals and see how to incorporate them into your professional projects. You can incorporate ideas beyond the current work responsibilities to try and fulfill the set values. 

2. Improves Your Ability to Achieve Milestones in the Shortest Time Possible

To achieve success, you should identify that one goal that best covers your interests. Once you’ve identified it, you must pursue it relentlessly. The idea is to focus on one goal at a time. 

According to The ONE Thing, this principle helps you focus on a small set of activities. It prevents you from stretching yourself thin, working on too many projects, and leaving them unfinished. 

Also, pursuing one goal at a time maintains your motivation by achieving smaller, frequent wins. Accordingly, you’ll need to break down your long-term goals into smaller milestones with strict timelines. 

Remember, maximizing your productivity requires you to focus on achieving one goal at a time.

3. It Incorporates Goals into Your Productivity System

Dr. Jim Taylor, a psychological researcher, discovered that the only way to get satisfaction in your professional success is to pursue other values and interests in your personal life. 

Although people may intuitively understand this aspect, sometimes it’s easy to get stuck while you focus so much on work. Thus, by the end of the day, you’re left with less time for other essential activities. 

4. Productivity Earns You More Time for Other Activities

By improving productivity, you complete tasks faster. As such, you create time for other high-priority activities. 

Additionally, once you learn how to prioritize activities, you’ll realize that some tasks are better off delegated to others or, better still, wholly discarded.

So imagine how much extra time you’ll gain from not performing certain activities.

5. Better Productivity Improves Morale

When a company helps its employees become more productive and organized, it invests in the well-being of its staff. Most employees view productivity as a company strategy to get them to do more work. But improved productivity gives a positive outcome for everyone involved. 

Reaping the benefits of increased efficiency improves your commitment and morale towards your employer and personal goals.

6. Improves Competitiveness

Anything you can do more efficiently, faster, and better than the next person gives you a competitive edge. Improved productivity leads to an increase in competitiveness. 

For instance, if you offer a service faster than your competitor, you serve more customers while increasing value to your customers. 

In addition, employers become beneficiaries of better productivity because it makes the organization achieve more than its competitors.

7. Reduces Employee Burnout

Spending the right amount of time on daily processes makes you cope better with your workload, allowing you to complete tasks within the allocated time.

When an employee has too much to do but has limited time, it results in exhaustion, stress, and total burnout. Thus, you need to work more effectively by delegating responsibilities and roles. 

This becomes a positive consequence between you and your employer. Furthermore, proper time management leads to more efficient, relaxed, and organized employees who focus on achieving their daily targets.

8. Optimizes Resources

Often, organizations don’t utilize their resources to their maximum potential. In most cases, employees become busy for some time; other times, they look for work to do. In dealing with such issues, a better human resource management approach increases productivity while reducing overheads. 

More effective staffing and better role distribution lead to making profits and reducing losses. Optimal utilization of a company’s workforce must be part of the change agenda. Accordingly, an improved workflow system identifies areas of overlapping roles. 

Organizations should identify areas of staff underutilization and create ways to ensure they achieve maximum potential. 

9. Seizes an Opportunity for Growth

An increase in productivity creates an opportunity for growth. An organization takes advantage of the improvement based on its needs. 

If productivity means more time for employees, it’s critical to determine how to spend the extra time. Far too quickly, you might realize that the employees spend spare time on mundane and time-wasting activities that pose as valuable tasks. 

10. Increases Profitability

Whether it is a personal business venture or an organization, there is an increase in profitability when it costs less to produce goods and services. 

When employees become more efficient, you require less labor to make the same quantity of goods. An organization may choose to retain the same workforce and benefit from the increased output.

11. Increases Engagement

A more productive worker becomes more engaged in their work. Engagement results from several factors such as leadership, autonomy in executing one’s duties, and the degree of control in their work-load. 

When your effort makes a difference, and you feel that you’re just not sailing with the motions,  you become more engaged and focused. 

Employees control and organize their work lives, leading to better engagement, commitment, and focus. If that’s not the case, they may choose to move to a different role that feels more suitable for them.

12. Reduces Environmental Impact and Waste

When individuals aren’t efficient, the environment also suffers. Getting work done in a shorter time means better electricity consumption and getting better at being organized. Without focus, resources go to waste. 

Therefore, improving productivity, whether at a personal level or in an organization, creates a healthier and happier environment.

13. Ensures an Optimal Workplace Environment

Managers should empower their employees to participate in different levels of decision-making. When workers contribute to the business growth beyond their mandate, their productivity increases because they experience a sense of value. 

In return, the business grows and thrives with improved productivity. Furthermore, process optimization, investment in technology, and creating a commitment for exemplary performance by the employees make productivity in business achievable. 

14. Enhances Wellbeing

Enhanced productivity improves your well-being. An individual’s well-being is a state where someone is happy, comfortable, and healthy. When you’re in control of your workload, you’re in a better position to have control of your life, cook better meals, exercise, and rest better.

With minimal stress, you have time to listen to your body and give it more of what it desires. After all, all good things in life are within reach if only we can put some effort into achieving them. It takes committing to making a few changes, and you see them add up to stunning results.

15. Lowers Operational Costs

A company can reduce operational costs by using specific initiatives. If employees improve individual workflow, they reduce the time to produce a particular output. It can also mean they produce more in less time. 

Also, investing in a personal productivity course, technology, and improved work processes lead to reduced labor costs. Introducing flexitime may also improve productivity because it reduces daily work commute, reducing stress. Often people can achieve more with a flexible work schedule instead of the rigid Monday-Friday plan. 

16. Improves Customer Service

When there is improved productivity in the entire organization, one of the benefits is that customers get more time and attention. 

Systems in the organization run better, and customers become beneficiaries of the efficiency. When the customer benefits, the company also benefits through increased profits, which translates to happier management.

17. Makes Working from Home More Efficient

Studies by Upwork indicate that when working from home, there’s better productivity than when working from an office. 

Averagely, people who work from home are 47% more productive than those who work in the office. Plus, they manage to get more done, work more hours than those in the office, and are more consistent. 

While the world discovers alternative options to remote working, there’s better productivity when working from home.

18. Prevents Work Backlog

Accumulating tasks causes stress. In addition, it becomes more challenging to create a workable plan. Enhancing productivity leads to increased compliance with deadlines. Optimizing your work hours allows you to do more within the same time frame. 

As such, there are increased chances of beating deadlines and ensuring you don’t have backlogs.

Accordingly, you’ll experience reduced emotional turmoil due to missed deadlines and constrained timelines. 

19. Gives a sense of tranquility

Once you improve your productivity, you create an environment where you can overcome obstacles. This makes you have a sense of tranquility and calm. 

Setbacks may be unavoidable, requiring you to take a detour. But believing you’re headed in the right direction gives you calmness and reassurance. 

20. Builds focus

When you’ve improved your productivity, you know what you want, and it builds your focus. You become free from having to worry about where to channel your attention. This level of clarity allows your mind to concentrate on the path ahead.

Conclusion

Improving your productivity is a key factor in driving organizational success and result-driven goals. When you aim at improving productivity, it adds incredible benefits at a personal level and to your organization.

It also means you’re doing what you need to get closer to your goals. Improving productivity is a self-improvement process that enriches your life and the paths you’ll make in the future. 

And if you feel you need professional help, Iris Reading has great resources for you. Our video-based Personal Productivity course is exactly what you need in your quest to improve productivity. Sign up today and reap the benefits later!