Top 8 Biggest Workplace Distractions

Time-wasters lower productivity and can definitely harm your career by fostering a bad image of a irresponsible persona who cannot do their job effectively.  

Removing the things that give little but valuable daily pleasures can be quite challenging, but it will make you more flexible and able to rise to challenges and resist temptations.

What are the most common time-managing mistakes employees make at work?

Surfing on the Internet

Unsurprisingly, web browsing comes as the number one time-waster. A number of studies have shown that surfing the Web stands out as the top place of biggest workplace distractions. Many workers close their web browsers so they won't feel tempted to look for non-work information on Internet.

Social media

Many people feel extremely passionate about social networking. They desperately need to update their status, share or upload pictures as often as they can. And when your job is closely related to the Internet like online advertising, for instance, you can't help accessing sites likes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, with such jobs the line between work and fun becomes really thin and easy to cross. Keep in mind that professionalism is a matter of self-control.

Regular inbox checks

Employees are usually distracted by a huge stream of messages and emails. Moreover, they have their phones notifying about every new message or emails that has been received. Notification alarming instantly kill your concentration which lowers your work performance. In order to stay focused on work tasks as long as possible, switch off your notification sounds or turn your phone in a silent mode as well.

Why don't make an experiment with yourself and try to cut out email reading, social media and web surfing only to see how much time would you have for the rest of the work day.

Personal calls

Some employees tend to spend long periods of time talking over the phone with a parent, kid or loved one. This can be a very harmful habit to foster, especially when a simple short phone call allows anyone to deal with almost every kind of situation or problem. Talking more than 15 minutes hurts productivity and eats valuable minutes of your time -  time your employer pays you to spend on tasks and projects.

Lunch breaks prolongation

Lunch break is time when employees pause from work and leave the office to have something to eat. Some people, however, think they can manage their time by doing some personal business and eat during lunch break. Usually, things don't go as planned and the lunch break goes way too long. This is why, this is considered another large time-water that managers and team leaders watch for.

Be late for work

Time management is what will make you a successful and wealthy person. This means to get up early in the morning and arrive on work at least 10 to 30 minutes before your coworkers and the official start of the workday. It gives you an extra time to psyche up for work and plan your day. If you arrive at work late and/or leave early you will never have sufficient time to do your job effectively, let alone it will make you look irresponsible in your coworkers' eyes.

Making online purchase via your work computer

Buying new possessions from eBay, sure, can wait until you finish with your daily tasks and come back home.

Looking and applying for other jobs

Whether to some people finding a better job can be very hard, for others working on one place doesn't provide them with a sufficient monthly income. That is why a number of employees try to find another place to work. There is nothing wrong with this until you start to violate your company’s rules and use the office computers to search and apply for other jobs. Not only this is rude and offensive to your boss and organization, but also it can get you fired the minute anyone figures out what you are doing. Think twice before you open a site for jobseekers.