3 Ways to Increase your productivity in an Open-office environment

Companies have embraced the open-office environment. The main argument is that it increases collaboration and creativity. Which is true. Yet, we shouldn’t forget pros and cons of such an environment. Majority of the cons are about the employees’ productivity. From co-workers asking for help, phone calls etc. How would one expect you to concentrate in such a destructive environment? Well, here are 3 ways you can be able to overcome that.

1. Move to a quieter place In an open-office, you can never predict what will happen the next minute. It could be dead quiet now and the next minute a fellow co-worker cracks a joke. Yet, there are days you’ll have to work on projects or tasks that demand most attention. So what do you do in that case? They say it is easier to change yourself than the world - Move to a quieter place.

In that case, it is advisable to find a quieter place that can allow you to concentrate. This could a boardroom or any other room at your company for extra use. This saves the burden of having to switch on and off. Or running into battles with colleagues telling them to tone down their conversations.

2. Learn to say NO! Have you ever been in a middle of a task and a colleague taps your shoulder asking for help? With a task expected to take you 5 minutes but in actual sense, ends up taking almost half an hour of your time? Well, this is common in open office environments. Fellow co-workers can access you by just a snap of their fingers.

The interesting news is that you can avoid getting sucked up into all that. It is as simple as saying NO. This sounds rude but just think about it - how many people come to your desk everyday unexpected? How much time do they take up? Doesn’t that time affect your daily targets? If yes, then you need to cut down on the number of times you say YES! This will in turn save you a lot of time.

3. Set aside “Do Not Disturb Time” Everyone has a time when they do tasks faster. Either it is early in the morning, mid-morning or after lunch. Look at it from the 80/20 rule point of view. That is the 20% of your time when you are able to do 80% of your tasks.

Whatever that time is, do not let others eat into it. This is because this time helps you do as many tasks at hand as you can. Letting others disturb you during will affect your level of productivity. Communicate to your fellows the times you shouldn’t be engaged into anything else. Another effective way of implementing this time is using headphones. Chances are high your co-workers won’t engage you while wearing headphones.

Are you running or working in an open-office environment? What are you doing to ensure productivity is not affected?