23 Best Ways To Improve Work Performance

Maybe you're a leader looking to improve your team's work performance. Or maybe you want to improve your personal quality of work. Either way, these tips will help you take a holistic approach to improving performance and productivity at work.

From setting goals and time management to decluttering and reading more books—in this guide, we discuss 23 actionable ways to become more productive, focused, and efficient with your work.

1. Set the right expectations
2. Create milestones and goals
3. Plan ahead and prioritize
4. Trim your to-do list
5. Learn to delegate
6. Work on your time management
7. Try out new ways of working
8. Use tools to simplify and automate
9. Manage your meeting time
10. Improve your communication skills
11. Be open to feedback
12. Invest in professional development
13. Build relationships at work
14. Learn to manage interruptions
15. Say “No” more often
16. Optimize your workspace
17. Create a daily work ritual
18. Take breaks
19. Pursue non-work interests
20. Develop a reading habit
21. Drink more water
22. Stay healthy, both physically and mentally
23. Avoid these situations to improve your performance at work

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1. Set the right expectations

To improve work performance—your own or your team’s—the most important place to start is by setting expectations.

Set achievable outcomes for yourself. This doesn’t mean assigning yourself a daily to-do list the size of your arm. It means being more realistic about what’s actually possible.

Don’t expect yourself to work without breaks or never take a day off. Understand that you will have peaks and troughs in your energy levels throughout the day. Accept that some days will be more challenging than others, and that’s ok. Even high performers have bad days! You need to let go of the pressure to always do more and instead accept what is realistically possible for you.

According to PsychCentral, “... we worry that if we don’t set high expectations for ourselves, we’re somehow letting ourselves off the hook. We’re being lazy or unambitious …. {but in fact} setting realistic expectations actually helps us grow and become more flexible.”

Similarly, if you want to build a high-performing team, you need to be clear about what you expect from your team members. Workers must have clearly defined expectations of their roles and responsibilities. In fact, research from the University of Canberra in Australia shows that employee performance hinges on clear expectations. “The effective management of expectations is an important element of developing high performance.”

Further, a McKinsey study found that many workers are leaving their jobs because of “unsustainable expectations of work performance.” To make your workplace more sticky and hold on to your best workers, you’ll want to set clear expectations and also make sure that they’re sustainable for your team.

2. Create milestones and goals

To quote a conversation between Alice and The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland:

​​“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don't much care where.

The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.

The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”

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What The Cheshire Cat is trying to help Alice (and the rest of us) understand is that if your only goal is to get anywhere, then you don’t need a route to get there. You’re likely to end up somewhere if you walk long enough. The lesson for managers in this is that if you don't have clear milestones and goals, you'll have a lot of wasted effort. Instead, if you have direction or a plan for your team, you won’t have to walk as long.

With the right expectations in place, the next step is to follow up with clear goals and milestones. These goals will give you (and your team) direction and provide you with a tangible way to measure the successful outcomes of your work. Make sure your goals align with your overall business goals and give them an achievable time frame.

Many successful people swear by the power of writing down your goals instead of just having a vague idea in your head. A study by Dominican University also found this to be true and concluded that “those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals.”

Break down bigger goals into smaller milestones. Milestones in project management help keep everyone on schedule and on the right path. They make sure everyone is working toward the right goals. Milestones convey progress, and achieving them can give you something worth celebrating.

3. Plan ahead and prioritize

Planning ahead and prioritizing projects and tasks is another practice that can improve overall work performance.

Many organizations like to put quarterly plans in place. These are strategic goals they create every three months that act as milestones for their larger annual plan. These can help you hone in on specifics and give your team clear-cut projects and tasks to focus on.

We all have days when we feel we have a lot on our plate. Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, at the end of the week, it feels like we’ve achieved little of consequence. This is why setting the right priorities matters. Prioritize your work by ordering the most urgent and essential tasks first. A tool like The Eisenhower Matrix can help you categorize your priorities and determine where you should focus your time and effort most.

Finally, if you’re a remote worker or an independent professional working from home, you’ll also want to create a clear plan or schedule for your day to optimize your productivity. Without a schedule, you may get caught up in the vortex of the neverending workday.

4. Trim your to-do list

Our brains love to-do lists, but overly long lists can, in fact, be counterproductive and prevent us from getting things done. Want to complete tasks more often? Slash your to-do list.

Unspecific, unprioritized to-do lists give us a rush, but ultimately help us achieve very little. As we discussed above, set your priorities and only add the most urgent and pressing tasks to your to-dos. If you’re really stuck, the 1-3-5 rule can be helpful. Add one big thing to your list daily, three medium things, and five smaller to-dos.

This popular productivity hack can help you get into the habit of prioritizing your list and ultimately help you hone in on the tasks that really matter.

5. Learn to delegate

As a leader, you can’t (and shouldn’t!) do everything by yourself. It’s easy to get caught up in being a perfectionist or believing that only you can do every single job on your plate. But, in fact, you may be holding yourself (and your team) back.

Delegation is an important management skill. If you’re struggling with it, you shoujld try to understand why. In fact, relinquishing control and assigning tasks can maximize your team’s productivity, reducing stress among workers and improving motivation and job satisfaction.

Even if you’re a solopreneur, you may be unable to do everything yourself. Learn how to delegate and get things done faster and sometimes better than you would do it yourself. You may even like to hire someone on Upwork to help you with the tasks you just don’t have the expertise or time for.

6. Work on your time management

If you feel like you’re always running out of time for your list, you may also want to look at your time management.

Start tracking your time. Understanding how you’re currently spending your time will give you better insights into how to make the most of it and not waste it. You may find that you actually have more time in your day than you thought!

This is also where planning and structuring your days comes in handy. Going back to our Cheshire Cat conversation in the first section, a plan helps ensure you’re not floating around from task to task with no fixed goals in mind. A set routine or structure can help you maximize your work time instead.

7. Try out new ways of working

We often get stuck in one way of working and don’t stop to think about what more might be possible. Yet, the way we work is actually changing.

Upwork research found that industrial-age work practices are going out of fashion as workers demand more in a post-pandemic era.

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In an article on Quartz, Dr. Travis Bradberry says, “The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.”

Instead of becoming stagnant in your approach to work, analyze your ways of working and see what’s effective and what isn’t.

For example, you may find yourself constantly switching from task to task. It may be time to try the Pomodoro Technique, which forces you to work in 25-minute increments to get focused work done.

Or maybe you’re a night owl, so why not try the graveyard shift? Some of us are naturally more energetic in the mornings and others later in the day. Try working according to your natural circadian rhythms and see if that makes you more productive.

You should also remember that energy is a renewable resource. But you need to give yourself enough time and space to replenish your energy. Don’t overschedule yourself and try to be productive every minute of every day. Take breaks and manage your energy to avoid burning out.

8. Use tools to simplify and automate

According to McKinsey, “Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming businesses and will contribute to economic growth via contributions to productivity.”

For most of us, this is no surprise. But automation isn’t just about robots. It’s also about incorporating tools into our work that help us automate and streamline work processes to be more productive and efficient.

Automating repetitive business processes with the help of the right tools can free up your time to focus on more strategic work. For example, most businesses use email marketing software. Instead of manually sending a welcome email every time a new customer signs up, it’s easy to configure the software to automate this process with a welcome email sequence.

Think about your day-to-day tasks and consider where you could incorporate tools to simplify and automate your work. Whether it’s automating your social media publishing or simplifying your hiring with the help of an alternative staffing solution like Upwork—be open to tools that will make work better and easier for you.

9. Manage your meeting time

Regular check-ins with team members or those you manage may be important, but be mindful of the amount of time spent in meetings. 67% of workers say spending too much time in meetings distracts them from doing their job.

As a leader, reconsider your meetings to see how you can optimize them or even remove them where possible. If you’re invited to a meeting, always ask for an agenda so you can ensure your time in the meeting is being spent on achieving an actual outcome.

Meetings aren’t all bad, but stay focused on making them productive and goal-oriented. A meeting is probably best if you’re dealing with a difficult conversation or an urgent, complex issue. But if you’re just sharing information, or the issue isn’t urgent, email may be better.

10. Improve your communication

Communication may not immediately seem like an obvious area that contributes to work performance—but it is!

Employees who feel included in more detailed communication are nearly five times more likely to report increased productivity. Clear communication about organizational vision or expectations result in better productivity and overall performance.

Effective communication also improves collaboration and teamwork, especially in remote team environments. A lack of proper communication between team members could slow down or derail projects. If collaboration goes awry and outcomes aren’t achieved, it could also cause unnecessary resentment between team members.

If you’re working with independent professionals and clients from around the world, you’ll want to learn how to use both synchronous and asynchronous communication methods for the best results. Good, clear communication is key for building strong professional relationships, so don’t ignore it.

11. Be open to feedback

Giving and receiving feedback is key in the workplace. Team members appreciate regular constructive feedback. It lets them know if their performance meets expectations and where they can improve. In fact, a lack of constructive feedback is one of the main reasons workers leave their jobs.

You’ll also want to ask for and be open to receiving feedback. Check in with your clients, managers, or team members regularly and ask for feedback on how you can improve. Ask specific questions for more constructive, actionable feedback.

12. Invest in professional development

Engaged workers are better performing workers. One of the keys to improve engagement is by offering workers an opportunity to upgrade their skill set and grow on the job.

An employee is incentivized to work better when they feel they’re learning and growing on the job. This is because the employee feels that the company is investing in their personal development. Gallup also found that millennials fundamentally think about jobs as opportunities to learn and grow. Their strong desire for development is, perhaps, the greatest differentiator between them and all other generations in the workplace.

Plus, as the workplace of the future changes, workers will need to learn new skills to thrive. Training and retraining both midcareer workers and new generations for the coming challenges will be an imperative.

On a personal level, you’ll also want to invest in your own professional development. Learn new skills and stay up to date with the latest trends in your industry. Whether you prefer to take courses, read books, listen to podcasts, or anything else—just keep learning. Learning new skills to remain competitive is touted as the most important way workers can future-proof themselves against workforce disruptions.

13. Build relationships at work

Positive professional relationships can have a huge impact on how you perform at work. Good working relationships can help establish trust, create respect, and enable better collaboration between team members.

For independent professionals, building trustworthy relationships with clients is also key for securing an ongoing pipeline of work. Clients are more likely to work with professionals they trust and have already established a collaborative relationship with.

Building relationships goes beyond your workplace. Networking is just as important. Developing a career network comes with several professional benefits, including help in your job search. For newbies, LinkedIn can be a great place to start creating new connections.

14. Learn to manage interruptions

On average, workers are interrupted every 6 to 12 minutes! Distractions and interruptions are a normal part of everyone’s workday but, if you let them take over, they can be detrimental to your productivity. Interruptions can mess with your focus and reduce your work performance.

Set aside time for deep, focused work. This means you may need to temporarily turn off (or mute) all your notifications on social media apps or instant messaging tools like Slack. You may even like to leave your phone in the other room so you’re not distracted by unimportant phone calls.

If you’re working from home with kids around, establish ground rules. Remind them that when you’re working, you’re working and they’re not allowed to interrupt you.

15. Say “No” more often

Learn to say no more often at work. It may be tempting to try to do everything. You may even hate to let others down. But in fact, saying yes may actually be counterproductive.

When you say yes to others, you’re often saying no to your own work and, therefore, your own productivity. You should prioritize your time and energy and learn to say no strategically to reduce stress and open yourself up for bigger, better opportunities. A simple “No” also helps ensure you’re spending time on work and opportunities that truly matter or interest you.

16. Optimize your workspace

Your work environment has a big impact on your job performance. Our brains like order, and research shows that constant visual reminders of disorganization drain our cognitive resources and reduce our ability to focus.

A cluttered desk or work area not only affects focus, but can also impact your working memory. Excessive stimulation from clutter often takes attention away from work and affects productivity.

While some people report being more creative in a cluttered space, if you’re finding yourself feeling unfocused or unproductive in your workspace, try tidying up and see if that has an impact on your work performance.

17. Create a daily work ritual

Build little rituals in your daily routine. Recent research suggests that rituals may be more rational than they appear. Why? Because even simple rituals can be extremely effective. Recently, a series of investigations by psychologists have revealed intriguing new results demonstrating that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Whether it’s going for a walk every morning before work, making time to eat a nutritious breakfast, spending time outdoors with your kids at the end of the day or anything else—these little rituals are usually comforting, help to take your mind off work, and make you a more productive worker by simply reducing your overall stress levels.

18. Take breaks

Research by Microsoft suggests that our brains need regular breaks. “Our research shows breaks are important, not just to make us less exhausted by the end of the day, but to actually improve our ability to focus and engage while in meetings,” said Michael Bohan, senior director of Microsoft’s Human Factors Engineering group.

The American Psychological Association agrees. “We know that after about 30 minutes, concentration starts to decrease, so it's important to take small breaks to stay focused on your main task."

The lesson? Take plenty of short breaks during the day. When and how often you take your breaks, and what you do during these breaks, is completely up to you. But make sure to build them into your daily routine. Without adequate breaks, you’re likely to be much less productive and burn out sooner.

19. Pursue non-work interests

More than half of the respondents to a major U.S. study reported feeling burned out. Burnout manifests itself in feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion, combined with a sense of hopelessness.

One way to prevent burnout is by doing more than just work. Your productivity at work isn’t just about how long you stay at your desk. Pursue other interests outside of work. This could mean taking up a sport, finding a new hobby, or joining a club. These interests bring balance to your life and are good for your overall well-being.

20. Develop a reading habit

Joseph Addison once wrote, "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

Reading is a self-improvement habit that will pay dividends in every area of your life, including work. In fact, reading can be beneficial for both your mental and physical health. A growing body of research indicates that reading strengthens your brain. It can also improve your ability to empathize, enhance your vocabulary, and reduce stress.

Similar to practicing meditation and mindfulness, reading enhances your ability to focus and be present. Whether you read fiction or nonfiction, reading can be beneficial on the workfront in more ways than one.

21. Drink more water

Water, or its lack (dehydration), can influence cognition. Mild levels of dehydration can produce disruptions in mood and cognitive functioning. Dehydration can also greatly impact your energy levels and attentiveness.

Often, we reach for coffee or an energy drink when we’re tired. While those are helpful no doubt, sometimes a glass of water may be just what your brain needs to get more focused. Your brain is strongly influenced by your hydration status. So drink up!

22. Stay healthy, both physically and mentally

Too often, people burn out. They hit a wall, with physical and mental health breakdowns, only then realizing that it’s time to deal with the lack of balance in their lives. Work-life balance is important if you want to remain a high performer at work.

Self-care and looking after your physical and mental health can mean different things for different people. Take breaks. Eat healthy meals. Make sure you sleep enough. Exercise and get outdoors at least once a day. Get a massage if it helps you. Meditate. Know yourself and know what your body and mind need to heal.

23. Avoid these situations to improve your performance at work

Finally, there are a few things you definitely shouldn’t do in your quest to become more productive at work.

Multitasking

When work piles up, we often try to cross two or more things off at once. While you may think you’re being efficient by multitasking, you’re actually doing the opposite. People who constantly multitask show an enormous range of deficits and are known to perform poorly in several cognitive tasks, including multitasking.

Recurrent distractions

If your work environment is riddled with recurrent distractions, it’s time to figure out how you can avoid (or minimize) them to become more productive. Have a clear plan for your workday and try to stick to it. Also set specific email-checking times. Constant refreshing isn’t helpful. Ditto for messaging or any other productivity apps you have a tendency to get sucked into.

Stressful environments

Avoiding stressful environments and situations at work isn’t always possible. But we need to learn to manage how to deal with them. Mindful activities such as walking or meditation may be helpful. Taking time to just breathe when a stressful situation arises can also help to melt away stress.

Postponing important tasks

Procrastination is often tempting, but putting off important tasks may actually prevent us from achieving goals and losing out on big opportunities. Instead of postponing your most important work, take the ‘Eat That Frog’ approach by tackling your most important task at the start of your day.

Ignoring your weaknesses

We all have weak spots and areas at work we could improve upon. Instead of denying it, acknowledge your weaknesses and use them as an opportunity to grow. If you’re struggling with writing, for example, but would like to contribute more blog posts, work on improving your writing skills.

Leaving things unfinished

It’s easy to leave tasks unfinished when they get hard. However, this means you end up feeling you have a lot of balls in the air and aren’t achieving much. When things get difficult, instead of leaving them unfinished, ask for help if needed. Or, leave it for the moment but come back to it later in the day or even tomorrow. Completing the task will leave you feeling much more accomplished and productive.

There’s always room for improvement

Productivity and work performance is a work in progress for most of us. Our tips will help you improve your habits and change your mindset so you can be a better, more efficient worker.

As a leader, they will also help you understand where your team is failing and what you can do to help them achieve more. If you need an additional pair of hands to delegate work to as you optimize your team’s work performance, Upwork can be the perfect place to find and hire an independent professional.

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyse and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.