Some days at work can go very easy, but there are other days that after a meeting, or after some specific situation, suddenly put your day with tons of things to do.
Since we are not machines, sometimes we may feel overwhelmed when we have many things to do at once. How to avoid collapsing? How to do more work in less time?
Since we are not machines, sometimes we may feel overwhelmed when we have many things to do at once. How to avoid collapsing? How to do more work in less time?
Doing more stuff in less time it has to do more with planning than actually doing. Here below are three steps that can make you start being more efficient at work:
Organize your work space
If you work in a physically active environment, then keep clean and organize the place where you are working. If your work is in an office, keep your desk clean and everything on its place. It is proven that if your workspace is clean and organized, you will be able to do your work faster and be more efficient.
What are the reasons? Well, there are so many times that you cannot find a tool you need for your work because is not in the place it’s supposed to be, which will make you lose time finding it. Also, such mess can give you distraction, imagine you are working on a messy desk, and all your need is your computer, your diary and pen, there is a high chance you can lose focus on your work if your eyes can see so much not relevant stuff around, suddenly your attention switch to the books, papers, or any other things that are where they’re not supposed to be.
Prioritize tasks
You can keep a diary or a notebook on hand during your work, on each day, write all the things you need to do (to-do list). Now, select two or three of them which are the most important task you really want or really need to get done, if there are more than three, it might take a little longer, but it is important to be realistic and to choose put in first priority few tasks, consider maximum a set of three.
You will focus your day on three objectives, and those are the three tasks that, by the end of the day, no matter what, you will do them. The secondary tasks are the ones that, you will do your best to achieve at 100%, however, they will not be the main focus.
For some people is difficult to set priorities at work, at the beginning it may take some time to learn how to prioritize, but with time and practice it can get easier, actually if you can prioritize fast, you are being efficient at planning. A good approach to know if one task is important is by asking you several questions such as:
Why the task is considered important? What is the outcome after doing it? When is the deadline? What happens if I am over the deadline? Will I have to overwork today if I avoid this task?
Start doing!
So, after you planned your priorities and secondary things to do on your notebook, is time to start doing them. You will put a time period to do each task.
For first priority tasks, you have to be realistic on how much time it will take you to do it, it is ten minutes or one hour? Set the time for each one. Then start with the first task, keep checking the time constantly for self-control, being aware on the deadline makes you push yourself and keep the focus on getting it done.
You can reward yourself after finishing one per time. For example, once I finish my first task, I will have a coffee, or I will take a quick 5 minutes break, or something similar. After finishing the priorities, you can move on to the secondary stuff, by working using the same time-setting method.
These three steps keeps myself in focus to do my everyday work as more efficient as possible, so far is the best approach that works for me. How about you? Do you have your own system to do more efficient and quality work? Please share your comments.