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Ultimate Guide To Improving Your Work Performance

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We all want to be better at our jobs so we can climb the corporate ladder, but sometimes it’s difficult to know where to exactly start.  Sure, there’s the annual performance evaluation that most employees receive, and those can be quite nerve-wracking, but in general, if you want to get a promotion or even a raise, it means having to go the extra mile for your work and to improve your work performance. 

So, what exactly needs to be done? This blog post has got you covered! These are some helpful tips for improving your job performance so you can really get to take off in your career. 

Start out with the basics

When it comes to any goals that you may have, such as improving your work performance, you’ll want to begin formulating how you’ll get there. When it comes to any goal, this is a part of the basic process.

Begin by setting up some clear milestones

Setting up some goals or even some milestones you’d like to reach is going to help you establish what you want and what vision that you’re after. It’s obvious that you want to improve your performance so you can get more out of your career, but it takes goals to get there. You end result is getting a better career but how exactly you get it is the important part. You need to break it down into small goals, these small goals will have steps to reaching these small goals. It may sound confusing but breaking everything down will make it far easier to learn, achieve, and understand.

Planning

Planning is key, and it’s something that cannot be neglected. You’re needing to set up milestones, and part of that process is planning. You need to plan out what your priorities are. Organizing, planning, and prioritizing are all super crucial when it comes to getting a routine, it becomes far more important when it comes to working on tackling and achieving your goals. Planning will lead to better habits and time management.

Conquer your difficult tasks first

After the planning process, you’ll want to tackle the more difficult ones first. Why? Well, the whole point of goals is to plan and prioritize. While you’re not expected to achieve all of your goals at once, it does help to begin tackling them one by one. It’s best to try and get the most difficult goal or step out first, as these are the ones that tend to be postponed or just pushed off too far.

Think about your strengths and weaknesses

One great way to truly analyze yourself, such as your work performance and the goals you hope to achieve would be through SWOT analysis. It’s important to be real with yourself, what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? A few things you may want to try is:

  • Find the patterns in your performance
  • Decide what you enjoy
  • Talk to your coworkers about what they believe your strength and weaknesses are
  • Talk to your manager or boss about what should be approved and what you excel at
  • Practice self-reflection
  • Think about how you respond to certain situations

When it comes to figuring out your own strengths and weaknesses, it can be a tad tough because you’re having to think about yourself from a completely different perspective. But try to let others know as they can help.

Ask yourself what some of your limitations are

We all have limitations, whether it’s something that’s okay to admit or not. Some areas need to be polished while some can just never be polished at all. Think about some of your limits, what are yours? There’s nothing wrong with having limits, nobody is superhuman.

  • It’s okay to say no
  • Multitasking can be hard
  • You have a personal life outside of your job
  • Back off when things are getting too hard
  • It’s important to be realistic, not just ambitious
  • Avoid burnout by figuring out where your sweet spot is

Everyone has their limits, you need to figure out what yours are. Limits are not a weakness, and the two should not get confused.

Eliminate distractions

Workplace distractions are a thing and they can come in a variety of forms. These types of distractions are going to be what gets in the way. They can even be dangerous as this means you’re wasting time and energy which could delay projects. Some tips for avoiding workplace distractions can include:

  • Avoid getting on your phone
  • Keep work life and private life separate
  • Use a chrome extension or some other blocker so you’ll be less tempted to go on recreational websites
  • Take short breaks

Sometimes it may even help out if you’re able to just work alone, as this may help avoid distractions with your environment (such as coworkers chit-chatting). 

Areas for improving your work performance

After you complete the basics of how you want to plan to work on improving your work performance, you can then begin starting on it. There are fortunately a variety of ways to get started, while it all may vary depending on your career, your industry, and your general tasks as these ways are sure to help.

Look into signing up for courses

Courses are one of the best ways for enhancing your skills and giving yourself that extra boost that your work performance may need. There are a variety of courses you can find, whether it be free or paid for. This can include something such as Telesales Training, but it could be anything else too. Talk to your company about courses, sometimes they offer their employees courses or will pay for it.  Certain courses will allow you to:

  • Receive certification
  • License
  • Other credentials to show your knowledge on the topic

Courses are also something excellent for improving skills and showing proof for the skills that you already have. There are plenty of affordable websites online that have courses available for sales such as Skillshare or Udemy, so definitely look around and check those out!

Always be open to learning

As stated above, taking courses can prove to be beneficial, but it’s also best to always have an open mind. Being a lifelong learner will allow you to bring learning into your daily life. This can include reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and even participating in relevant studies within your industry. This will let your coworkers and the management team know that you’re always looking into ways to improve yourself and the industry.

Encourage desk cleanliness and organization

It’s been proven time and time again that a messy environment can really slow down one’s work performance. If you have a lot of stuff scattered around such as documents laying everywhere on your desk then look into finding ways to get them organized. Just make sure to clean out your desk thoroughly and get the proper organization tools to help you out.

Don’t leave tasks unfinished

Regardless if a new or an exciting project is coming your way, it’s best to go ahead and finish up your old projects and other tasks before taking on anything new. Leaving old tasks unfinished and quickly jumping on the next thing without consideration can really harm your career. This can even create massive delays. Look into allocating some additional time to finish up your other tasks, and if there is even a time constraint, look into getting an extension or find other ways to allocate more time to it. It’s best to organize your workload, make it small, so the milestones can become achievable far quicker.

Look into getting more experience

There are plenty of ways to gain experience whether it be project management or anything else that you’re wanting to do to boost your career and to improve your job performance. If your boss, supervisor, or anyone else that oversees you notices that you’re completely focused on improving yourself, this may encourage them to invite you to take on more responsibilities. Another way to gain experience is to just simply ask the higher-ups, it may be pretty bold, or even downright unusual, but it never hurts to ask.

Ask for constructive feedback

Do you know how your work performance is going at work? Have you recently completed a new project and are unsure about your work performance? It’s best to look into talking with your manager or supervisor about your project. Constructive feedback can be marvelous, and if you reach out and ask, they will usually be more than happy to oblige. This also gives the chance of hearing what some of your positives and strengths were during the project as well. It may sound super intimidating to just go and ask out of the blue for constructive feedback, but it’s quite obvious that it’s for a good cause.

Look into mentorships

If you’re still new in your career then this is going to be fundamental. Even if you do have experience and knowledge, being mentored by someone who is an expert is really going to make a difference for you as they have decades of experience and knowledge at their back. 

PM Today Contributor
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