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.
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.
