Ever have one of those days when you say to yourself, “Gee, today wasn’t a productive day. I didn’t do X, Y or Z.”

While the day might have been a wash, chances are you’re more productive than you think in the long run.

In this post I take at the big picture and provide a few examples that might indicate a slowing down of your productivity overall.

You keep doing the same thing over and over again…and get the same results.

There’s a difference between practicing and honing your skills and just plain spinning your wheels. Are you confusing any old action or movement with progress? Productivity requires you to take a look at where you’ve been and what hasn’t been working and making a few slight corrections to improve your productivity in future.

If you’re having a tough time gauging whether or not you are in this vicious cycle in a particular task or project (which often happens when you become too close to something), it might be time to enlist the help of a colleague, coworker or friend to help you take an objective and fresh look at your work.

Your tools are dull and/or broken.

Your productivity can suffer greatly when your tools are broken, dull or outdated. Ever try to cut a piece of paper with a pair of dull scissors? It can be a very frustrating experience! There comes a time when you absolutely need to put your regular work aside so you can upgrade devices, apps, systems and tools to allow you to produce your best work.

Instead of looking at this as lost time, think of it as investing in your future work and productivity. You could also think of it this way…the longer you wait to replace or update these items, the more work you’ll have to do in future to bring everything up to snuff. Why not take care of things now before they get even more unwieldy and out of control?

You’re tackling the wrong problem or issue.

Like many things in life, productivity is relative. Are you choosing the right item to work on at the moment? For example, you could be working quite productively on a sales report…only thing is you’ve got another more pressing marketing report that’s due later this week. Is the work you are focusing on truly at the root of your goals for this day or week? You might have to go a few steps back to see where you took a wrong turn and correct your path.

How about you? Can you think of any other ways to know when you are clearly not being productive at work? Join in the conversation and leave a comment below!