Post written by Marlon Ribunal.
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Don’t sweat the small stuff – this idiom has a lot to tell about productivity. You don’t only need to stop worrying about unimportant issues; you should also drop the unimportant things as well. The small stuff sometimes make the difference in your daily work; but they oftentimes add to your burden as you pass through the labyrinth of your daily responsibilities. Here are the five things you should consider stop doing to free up more time or more focus toward productivity:

1. Stop Replying To Emails You’re CC’d In

Don’t even bother replying. The fact that you are on the cc tells you that your are provided the copy of that email for your reference. Many still don’t get the concept of the cc (copy) in an email. If you are cc’d in an email, the sender usually means “I am sending you copy of this email for your reference; don’t reply back.“

2. Stop Digging To Your Voice Messages First Thing In The Morning

This is a productivity killer. Messages sitting on your voice inbox can sometimes take away some of your focus needed to set you in for the rest of the day. If the voice messages are  matters of life and death, the callers would have made a point to reach you by all means instead of leaving messages. This is a mistake that most do when they first take their seats in the office or cubicle. Check your To-Do list instead. Wait for about an hour or whenever you already finish assessing what needs to be done with your listed items and are ready to take the necessary actions to check them off of your list.

3. Stop The Drive-By Chats

It is ok to be friendly but it’s not ok to chat for chatting’s sake. There are many things to talk about – the economy, events, news headlines, Lady Gaga, etc – but unnecessary chat encounters are productivity assassins. They not only eke out positive energy out of you but they also tend to breed office gossip. But please don’t be antisocial.

4. Stop Attending To Your Personal Duties

Do you need time to address some family issues or to fulfill a family errand? Take some time off from work. Multi-Tasking becomes a burden when you are doing multiple and unrelated things altogether at the same time. Focus on your family first by attending to whatever needs your attention and come back to work afterwards when done. You can only give the best of you to your loved ones when you put all the necessary attention to it. Your job deserves no less than that.

5. Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is not only  a productivity killer but also a dream killer. Hundreds of important tasks are dump on the wayside of unimportance because of procrastination. Learn to weigh in the things that matter most and discard the stuff that you do not need. The primary reason why people procrastinate is that they cannot distinguish what’s important from the unimportant. Great amounts of energy are wasted because people do the things that don’t matter.

We can easily identify the things that kill our ability to be productive. We can tell in an instant what these things are. But these things are usual part of our daily rituals. Do we need them? What does it take to get rid of the unimportant things in our daily office life?

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