Ditch these 6 habits if you want to succeed at work

You may not even realise you are doing the things that are holding you back – ditch these six habits at work if you want to succeed.

1. Skipping breakfast
The snooze button is not your friend! We’re all guilty of staying in bed until the very last minute, but it’s damaging your career. You need to give yourself enough time in the morning to eat breakfast, or at least have a routine of taking your cereal and fruit to work. If you’re skipping breakfast, you’re setting yourself up for an unproductive day.

2. Gossiping with colleagues
Many of us think that the only way we’re going to make friends is by getting involved in office gossip. But it’s actually taking up your time when you could be concentrating on something more beneficial than who is dating who. It’s important to make friends, but your boss isn’t stupid and they pick up on who are the gossipers in the office and they don’t like it.

3. Checking emails far too often
It’s too easy to check our emails before getting out of bed in the morning and then continue to check them every few minutes for the next 17 hours. Unless something is very important, ditch this habit as it’s actually wasting your time. Set yourself specific times during the day to check your email and give yourself a new outlook on your productivity.

4. Not planning your day
Instead of throwing yourself in at the deep end every morning, take a couple of minutes to write down your tasks for the day and identify which are the most important. By setting time aside for the tasks that matter the most, you are giving them your full attention and fitting smaller tasks around them. At the end of the day, have a think about what needs doing the next day so you’re ready when you get into the office.

5. Drinking too much caffeine
It might help us wake up, but it’s not going to have a good impact on you throughout the day. If you want to be successful, replace coffee with water as it does a much better job of kick-starting your body and will leave you feeling much better, as coffee tends to give us indigestion. Try scheduling coffee breaks for when your cortisol levels aren’t at their highest, so between 9.30am-11.30am and between 1pm-4pm.

6. Not getting involved
If you’re not appearing to be a team player, then senior management will never notice you and you will never be considered for a higher role. Chat to your colleagues and make an effort with them, as well as offering help when needed. The more you make yourself seen, for good reasons, at work, the more likely success will come your way.