How to become more efficient and less stressed at work

Kora
Kora
Nov 3 · 7 min read

A simple trick for project managers and those who want to keep their monkey mind at bay.

I am one of those people that think of reminder apps as one of the greatest inventions of all time. Practical and value-adding. Addictive in a sense. I use mine on a daily basis. All the time really, and for all sorts of topics. It helps me put my thoughts in order, it keeps my mind at peace — it feels as though writing it down already gets half the job done — and makes my life organized and efficient.

We all run busy lives and we all have things that need to get done. A million of things. Our brain can only sustain so much memory. We can either choose to leave it to chance (and our limited memory for that matter) or simply put our thoughts and tasks in order and maximize our efficiency in getting things done and in the priority they need to get done. It works. It does for me at least. It’s perfectly fine if you still think of wheel as the biggest invention in history. I know people that feel suffocated by the mere thought of reminders. I write this being fully conscious that reminders are not for everyone.

If you are one of those that uses them, then continue reading. You are one of us. You like efficiency and you might appreciate the following trick to use at work. I think it is particularly useful for project managers or people that work on deadlines and timelines and want to organize their work life better.

Prerequisite: a Calendar system, MS Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, any. Most of professionals nowadays can have access to some sort of calendar system (desktop or on the go). If not, then download one.

My reasoning is simple. Why not apply the reminder idea at work utilizing the most widely used ‘reminder’ system, the calendar? Why not combine all the things you have to do, meetings you need to attend to, deadlines you have to meet, internal and external tasks you have to complete, notes, thoughts, think blocks and reminders, all in one system? What I am suggesting here is a form of ‘time blocking’ that maximizes your productivity via the art of scrapping parallel reminder lists and ‘minimizing to the maximum’ elapse times between tasks.

The Why

Calendars are traditionally used in a ‘push’ mode, as a bipartisan reminder to either attend to a meeting or a call. In parallel, there are a million other things we know we should be doing. Constant distractions don’t make it easier; neither does an open working space or simply a monkey mind. And between back to back meetings and action points, structure gets lost in thoughts, importance lost in urgency. This usually ends in a deep sense of in-completion and a state of stress. But what if we had the structure? What if we knew and saw what the priorities for the day, week and month are and had a plan of how to achieve them? What I am referring to is a prioritization in a ‘visual’ form, translated into clear chunks of time blocks in your calendar.

The default ‘push’ usage of the calendar assimilating a ‘pull’ function. Efficiency follows.

And I will try to explain. Most of our best thoughts and ideas come to mind in the spur of the moment. Ideas of what needs to get done and how you can go about executing it. In that moment you have two options; either you complete right away or postpone. If you postpone, this thing, which is very likely to be an important one — as inspirations usually are — will most certainly get lost in thin air. There is a difference between conceptualizing an idea and executing it. Conceptualization might make you smart but acting upon (not necessarily executing it yourself) takes you and you company one step further.

You might look at it from a different angle. It is true that not every thought or task is an inspiring one, one that will earn you the extra points at work. Some stuff are simply stuff that need to get done. By allocating time for these ‘stuff’ you create the structure not only in your head but also your day schedule to make sure you get it done. Otherwise, urgencies and emergencies will inevitably take over.

For me, efficiency is knowing what are the most important things I have to do in a specific time horizon and preparing the ground to go about and execute them. Not working hard, but working smart and organized.

The How

How to do this?

Simple. Block times in your calendar, in the order you deem is right and block them for all the things you know will come your way, this coming week and the weeks after, for as long you have schedule visibility for. Organize these tasks around your usual calls and meetings and if more things come along the way, then go ahead and reorganize your calendar to fit in the new inputs. You are more than welcome to shift things around. Priorities change, with new inputs come new perspectives, what was important yesterday might not be important today and so on and so forth. There will always be deadlines and urgencies you can not avoid.

My point is that, by having it in your calendar you will ensure it will get done. You will not forget, you will not procrastinate deliberately. And if you don’t get to it and keep pushing it back, this might simply mean it was never meant to be done. This is what I would deem as unimportant, a not so well idea that ended up in the dustbin. That’s fine.

The Benefits

For those of you that reached this point half-hearted, I give below some of the method’s benefits as experienced first hand.

1. By blocking your calendar for a specific amount of time to work on something, you see approximately how much time it will take and you work towards completing it. In other words, you do your best to complete it on time. It doesn’t really matter if the duration you give it is super realistic or not. Of course, the more realistically you block the better planned your day is. The important thing being, you will complete the task, even if it takes you longer than what is supposed to. Odds are you wouldn’t even touch that task hadn’t you put it in your calendar in the first place. Besides, the benefits you get by getting to the task, staying on it and completing it far outweigh the risk of wasting a few minutes.

2. By filling up you day with consecutive blocks, not only do you see the upcoming tasks (they are there, in your calendar), you know how much time each one will take you, then you work on one and move on to the next. Your working day takes a shape, you eliminate elapse times between tasks and gain efficiency. Extra bonus; your day passes way much faster when you always know what the next item on the agenda is.

Don’t forget to give your schedule some ‘fat’. Give realistic times but always put in some extra time in between. The plan here is to make you feel less stressed at work, not more. Correct planning comes with time and experience. You improve as you go. If you are running late simply move the next more important task a bit further down your day. And if at the end you end up with left overs, move those left overs to tomorrow or the week after. It shouldn’t be that important if you had the option to move it back anyway. Which takes me to my next point.

3. If you block it then it means you have to do it, sooner or later. This is some kind of a prioritization system of collectively exhaustive items. First things get done first and at the end you end up doing them all (assuming they all needed to be done at one time, otherwise you wouldn’t have put them on your calendar). And if you can’t get to an item or don’t feel like doing it, then don’t do it. It won’t be that important anyways. Simply push it back, reschedule for another time in the future or drop altogether.

4. The system ‘allows’ you to block time to think. I do that a lot. I block time in my calendar to think, reflect on meetings, do research and in general, think things through and not just execute. People that have back to back meetings will particularly appreciate that. Block some time to step back and think. Only if you block it you do it. If only we had more time to think, our meetings would be more efficient, our work much more valuable, and we would all be better professionals, better managers.

5. We all have our down days. Some times we have an option but others we don’t. Truth is, that task needs to get done. Seeing the task in there is like you are ‘gently’ forced to do it. It’s like a boring but very important meeting you have to attend. You simply go. Hadn’t you had it in your calendar you would probably miss it. Remember though, this article is all about efficiency. If a task is not that important feel free to skip. If not, it will get pushed down the way anyways.

The above is a simple yet extremely effective technique to become more effective and less stressed at work. In addition to its efficiency qualities I think that this concept of building blocks or — as I like to call it — ‘feeding’ a monkey brain structure and giving it one thing at a time to concentrate on, shares a lot of the qualities meditation brings. It makes you being fully present while doing something. This maximizes efficiency.

Some people may have other ways of organizing their work. Personally, I am of the opinion that using a calendar to provide you with the structure is great as it’s easily accessible, it’s visual and you are already half using it so it’s easier to get used to. As with all things it takes some time to learn to work around it and perfection the technique. I can only encourage you to give it a try for a couple of weeks. If it ends up frustrating you more than de-stressing you then leave it alone. At least, you will have tried.

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