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10 tips to increase your productivity
Follow
these rules to manage time better at the I workplace and enhance your
efficiency.
Are you spinning out of control with endless demands on your time and life?
Are your stress levels at an all-time high with never ending tasks and
deadlines leading to endless working hours and no family time to recharge
your batteries? It is time to master productivity skills for the workplace
that will empower you for higher performance while enabling good health and
a better work life balance through reduced stress and efficient use of
office time. Here is how
1 Think start your day
Spend the first 10 minutes of
your work day to figure out what you want to achieve. Think through
pending jobs, pressing problems and urgent deadlines while making notes on
your diary or a task list. Rearrange them into a rough check list
prioritising the most important tasks on top. The first on the list becomes
your primary goal for today – something that will make the day worthwhile.
Use the early part of the day to complete stuff that requires greater
mental bandwidth and save the afternoon for meetings or repetitive chores
2 Clock your talk
A large part of a wasted day
invariably goes into communication that took too much time and yielded
little output. Become aware of when you speak, to whom and for how long. If
you are on the phone, stand up to speak and sit down only when the
conversation is over. If you are conducting a meeting, set a start and
finish deadline. If it is an unscheduled urgent chat with a colleague, box
it to 2 minutes before you head back to your task list.
3 Birds of a feather
Group similar tasks together and
tackle them as a block with a deadline. Read all e-mails in 10-minute slots
at one go, but only every 2 hours or more. Similarly make your 20 sales
calls in a row. Clubbing similar tasks increases the rate at which you complete
them once you settle into a rhythm for that batch. Engage technology to
help you out like using labels or folders to automatically bunch together
similar emails. Between two diverse sets, take a quick break and walk about
to get refreshed and to change gears for the next lot
4 Take baby steps
Remind yourself every few
minutes – is this really the best use of my time? Stop unproductive work
and start the next task on the checklist with a simple action. Or focus on
taking a baby step that will get you closer to your goal for the day. Thus
you can catch yourself from chatting over Gtalk or the office messenger and
refocus on researching information for tomorrow’s meeting instead
5 Divide and conquer
Often there is a project or target that is simply
too big and complicated and keeps getting put off for later. In such cases,
divide the project into smaller sub-projects and break those down further
into individual actions. From this list figure out what can be done by
other people and immediately communicate and delegate the tasks to them.
From the rest, pick up the easiest actions and accelerate them to a close.
Soon you will pick up momentum and achieve significant progress
6 Quick to decide, slow to
change
On a cumulative basis, the
biggest hurdle to productivity is your reluctance to decide early combined
with an eagerness to revisit and revise those decisions. Reverse that
attitude and commit to taking quick decisions and sticking through with
them. Do you need to fix up a meeting for next week? Decide on 3 pm for
Wednesday, communicate it, set a reminder and move on. Over time, your
quick decisions will be as good if not better than the decisions you put on
the back burner
7 Uni-task
Multi-tasking kills productivity
and is as useful to you as Windows 95. The right way to work efficiently is
to schedule and prioritise tasks and then tackle them one at a time. With
complete focus on that one task, your speed will go up dramatically and you
will get a lot more done in any given hour than if you try to speak on the
phone while creating the sales chart on Excel.
8 Swallow the bitter pill
Most efficiency experts recommend that you start the day by tackling
the most unsavoury task first. Once that is out of the way, a lot of energy
is released that helps you zip through the rest of your list. Try and see
if that works for you. However some professionals work better by keeping
the distasteful task for the last. Avoiding or delaying that task creates
an impetus to finish other less unsavoury tasks in an effort to stay
productive. Soon the rest of the check list is done and dusted and you have
no choice but to tackle the last one. Which kind of person are you?
9. How to procrastinate
How do you decide whether a
non-critical task should be done immediately or later? If it takes less
than 30 seconds do it right away, like responding to an email invitation
for a meeting. For a longer non-urgent task, put it on your Google calendar
or workplace scheduler as a reminder for the appropriate time. In both
cases, the actions enable you to forget about it completely and move on to
your next goal for the day.
10 The last thing to do
15 minutes before the end of
day, review what you have done. Would you have performed better if you had
done things differently? What would you change? This evaluation exercise
will ramp up your efficiency on a daily basis. Finally before you leave,
clear your desk of all objects and papers apart from the computer and a
notebook and pen if you use one. The next morning will start well when you
return to an uncluttered workplace.
Thumb rules of efficiency
• 80-20 principle
The Pareto principle suggests that 20% of your time and efforts will
yield 80% of the outcomes you desire. Focus first on those tasks that will
yield such results and you will be amazed and satisfied with your output.
• Silence is golden
To work faster and better, shut out everything that pings, beeps,
blinks or talks when you are in the middle of a task. That means muting
your laptop, cell phone, chat window and even putting a “Do Not Disturb”
message for your colleagues. Warning: this does not apply to your boss!
• ABC analysis
Divide your tasks into A, B and C lists. Tasks that need to be done
right away, like making a critical sales call, make the A list. The B list
has tasks that need to be done today like making that invoice. The C list
is for non-urgent tasks like working on next month’s report. Focus on A and
B tasks and ignore C tasks till they become A or B.
• Time is money
So pay money to buy time where profitable. A smart phone with a 3G
connection that lets you work anywhere may be a good investment. Or a
driver for your car so that you can work or sleep through your 2-hour
commute to work.
• Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
Articulate and write down each work goal such that it is Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. E.g. I will complete the
first 6 slides of tomorrow’s presentation between 10 am and noon today.
DEVASHISH
CHAKRAVARTY .
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