Some people feel more productive when they focus on their tasks and finish them in less time. Others when finishing many tasks in a day. And some even consider themselves more efficient after completing a complex task. Whatever your case, it’s always good to look for new ways to be more productive at work. In this article, we offer you some tips that may be helpful.
Wait! Don’t be alarmed. These are not impossible, but small actions you can implement in your workplace will make a big difference. Now we will explain them to you.
1. Prioritize your tasks
Some activities take more time than others. For example, writing a chain of emails is much more time-consuming than sending them or building the list of recipients of the email. The recommendation is to do the most difficult tasks first and then move on to the simpler ones.
In the same way, do the heaviest things in the morning, which is when most people have more predisposition and energy. This way, you will be sure to accomplish the most important things before the midday or post-lunch sluggishness sets in.
2. Set goals for the day
Another tip for being more productive at work is to set small goals to accomplish during the day. It is about organizing your tasks and what you want to achieve: send 5 emails to suppliers and review 10 stack reports, among others. Try to set a time limit to achieve it; for example, call 12 clients before lunch.
The goal is to stay calm if you meet these goals but to motivate yourself with the time limit and keep moving. If you try it, you will see how things work out faster.
3. Take regular breaks
The recurrent problem is that many people think breaks could be more productive. These people couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, your overall performance level is more likely to drop without breaks. That’s why you must take adequate breaks.
We’re not just talking about getting your full hours of sleep at night, but also about active breaks, from having 15 minutes to stretch your body and grab a bite to eat to going for a walk and taking the dog out. You’ll see how even the most complex problems get solved faster.
4. Take one task at a time
Multitasking is not synonymous with productivity. This is something that some bosses and coordinators need help understanding, as they believe that the more work they add, the better and more efficiently you will perform it. In reality, work overload generates that things go differently than they should.
So, we suggest you do one task at a time but put all your efforts into it. What does this mean? Try to minimize distractions such as cell phone notifications and the temptation to check networks and chat with colleagues.
5. Delegate your tasks
Wanting to take on everything is never a good idea. You know what the saying goes: he who encompasses too much squeezes too little. We can do small tasks ourselves, but when they compete with more complex jobs, one of the best options is to delegate them. This way, you can focus on the things that require more concentration.
6. Set up your day in blocks
One of our tips to be more productive at work is to start dividing your day by blocks (morning, afternoon, and evening) and, accordingly, organize the tasks to be done in each one. For example:
Morning: take the dog for a walk, pick up dry cleaning, and study a chapter for the next master’s lesson.
Afternoon: Check emails, respond to suppliers, and make and send quotes.
Evening: Exercise, review responses from suppliers, and prepare topics for tomorrow’s meeting.
This will make it much easier to do the tasks and track what you need to do next. You will avoid wasting time with dead hours, and your day will yield to do more things. So, let your motivation be that after following these blocks, you will be a programmer, designer, copywriter, or essay writer free of uncontrollable anxiety, overdue deadlines, and disorganization.
7. Use the two-minute rule
The two-minute rule is an excellent resource to increase productivity and consists of the fact that if a task takes less than two minutes, you must do it immediately since you risk forgetting it and letting it go. This can be anything from responding to a comment left on the networks you manage as a community manager to answer your boss’s email.
8. Detail the outline for your meetings
If there’s anything more annoying than an hour-long meeting in which no one agreed, we don’t know what it could be. And let’s be honest, this type of meeting happens more often than we want it to. All because we don’t know how to optimize our time.
As part of these tips to be more productive at work and avoid tiring meetings, we suggest you prepare all the points you want to discuss in advance. For example, if you are interested in asking your boss about the upcoming Valentine’s Day campaign or how they will approach a certain topic in the company’s communication, write down those topics on a sheet of paper and bring it to the meeting.
This will remind you where the meeting line needs to go and prevent distractions and topic changes that lead to non-productive places.
Productivity and its forms
Remember that productivity has many forms, from attending 5 meetings daily to writing a well-structured mail to request something to an authority. Each person has their own concept of what it is to be productive according to their reality and adapts to what suits them best. Therefore, we hope that these tips to be more effective at work, although general, will be helpful to you.