How is your working day most of the times, is it smooth sailing or does it tend to be quite long, really tough and suffused with repetitive tasks throughout the working hours. People who seem to be leaning more towards the latter category quite likely have fallen into the bad and eminently avoidable habit of rolling out of their beds and heading right into the office.
More Satisfying Outcome
The best part is as the day progresses and unfolds one would find plenty of good opportunities to fine tune the entire process for a much more satisfying outcome. If you want to have some sense of control on your workday then you need to pay attention to effective time management, this would help you schedule your work better and result in an improved output.
Making Real Progress
Many a times a whole lot of people tend to procrastinate as they
cannot figure out their next course of action as clearly as possible. When you can actually arrive at the determination of what you need to be doing next, you are able to say to yourself, wait a minute, I could do that thing better and really fast, than you are making real progress.
The Nuances
Such people certainly need to pause and spare a valuable moment, wherein they need to consider and appreciate the nuances of their daily routine. Add to this the all important dimension of productivity, well you need to work smarter, much more than working as hard as you probably can.
Action Level
You could always improve on your search skills to surf the web for information, or leaving a message on the voicemail, things like these can be accomplished fairly quickly say within two minutes. The trick is to break everything down to the next level where action is happening. And then at the first instance, when you manage a window of time, take a glance at the actions, pick the one that fits within the available time frame.
One would be amazed that a lot of things can be accomplished in less than two minutes. The two minute rule comes in handy in completing many a tasks, if you pause for contemplation and planning, lot many valuable two minutes would be spent organizing and reviewing it. It makes sense to clear things out, get them done if they can be done under two minutes, purging mails, clearing spam, whenever you happen to come across strange or weird little windows of time, do make best use of them.
Relook and Rethink
Whenever you have more to accomplish, it makes sense to file the same for larger chunks of time, where you can easily focus on such activities. This is indeed a wonderful approach to getting things done, of getting rid of small things, instead of parking them somewhere, having the need to relook and rethink and spend more time on it then necessary.
Be Like Teflon
One must be like Teflon and train oneself to make snap executive decisions. The best thing about the two minute approach is that it can prevent the hours slipping away from you. It is a good idea to delegate larger tasks or add it to the list of later tasks.
Eat the Frog
Make a note of your deadlines at the start of the day, schedule them realistically, try and get the difficult tasks out of the way at the first possible instance. All the while keep an eye on the clock, and move forward when the self imposed deadline is reached.
Work Smarter
Productivity is never about cramming in way too much into your day. It is all about making the choices that enable you to use your time to work smarter. Just by making a few changes to your daily routine you would be able to achieve your goals.
The Commute Time
Use the commute time for all important self development, relaxation as well as building fitness by walking, running or cycling to work whenever possible instead of using a car or public transport. You must be mindful during your commute to relax and gain focus.
Stay Focused
Make good use of the time before lunch when you are most alert and your concentration levels are really high. It is always good to plan things ahead before executing them. You can only get things done by staying focused on tasks at hand.
The Morning Routine
It helps to wake up earlier and establish a morning routine that tells your brain to warm up as it needs to get working, incorporate a fair amount of exercise, and even ten minutes of writing to warm up your brain is quite helpful, maybe maintain a dairy.
Final Words
Always follow the 2 minute rule, which is really simple, if it takes less than 2 minutes do it, if more, than schedule or delegate. Refrain from multitasking, make it a point to finish one job at a time. Avoid having heavy lunches, and finish off the easier tasks when your energy levels are lower.
A good night’s sleep is a must to stay productive. Working on these tips is surely going to improve your performance, making small and incremental changes to the way you work can surely make a huge difference to your output. In order to be happy and productive one must guard and nurture the energy levels at all times more than anything else.