Getting More Work Done in Less Time
Curated Advice from Experts on Avoiding the Trap of Time
Doing more work, in less time at work can be a huge lifesaver.
Whether you work for a large corporate or a small business, saving time and effort is a win-win for everyone involved, from the boss to your co-workers.
For the majority of people productivity is an individual experience, with various approaches working for different types of people.
There’s no one recipe allowing you to get work done in less time, but instead a host of habits to distill into your daily activities that will play into the big picture, save time and produce the best results for everyone.
Experts in the productivity field tend to have proactive strategies to conquer time and share some great advice which we’ll dive into with this article.
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1. Task Batching
Batching tasks based their type or energy level can be a very effective way to get things done in less time. This is commonly referred to as “theming”.
Theming helps to craft a group of to-dos together based on either the type of activity (e.g. filming, emailing, writing) or by the energy level you have (low, medium or high energy). It’s really simple.
Ari Meisel in his book “The Art of Doing Less” discusses this concept of batching to-do’s across your week.
Here’s some advice he shared to CreativeLive.
Theming doesn’t have to solely be focused on the task context. You can correlate theming based on the days of the week, helping you to build a better picture of the week ahead.
Mike Vardy from the Productivityist shares his insights into theming his days.
As a dad and successful creator, Mike explains why correlating a set or type of tasks on specific days of the week can be beneficial. This has saved him energy, improved quality time with his family and provided him with a more proactive approach to his week. This even works for the night owl, like Mike!
I’m not wasting as much energy going through my day because I’ve categorized it with a specific focus and then I bookend the day with my morning and evening routines. The only part of the day that is essentially “different” is the middle.
The themes minimize that by pulling me towards an overarching focus instead of bouncing all over the place.
(Quote taken from Mike Vardy’s article, SOURCE: Productivityist)
Naturally our routine changes and adapts across the week, but theming your days or even your week’s can save you value time and push projects forward by progressing rapidly.
Another approach to task management is “chunking”.
Chunking is endorsed by the likes of Tony Robbins, as a way to break down a single task into actionable bitesize actions, reducing stress by making projects more approachable.
This tactic is used by many but applied alongside theming tasks or batching to-do’s can be a useful approach to save time with less effort.
So how can I get started?
Easy, all you’ll need is your calendar.
Begin by choosing what days you’ll use for specific tasks and items. This could be batching all of your filming or designing into a 3-hr slot for the week, or all of your document creating into your 4hr afternoon, whatever suits you.
The second thing would be to base your batching around your energy, if you are a morning person, put some more intense tasks to start your day, then some lighter ones in the afternoons.
Remember to continually adapt task batching to best support your efforts.
2. Reduce Meetings
Meetings are always a tricky one.
There’s an expectation to attend meetings and keep updated. I’m sure if we took 10 people from just fresh out of a meeting and asked what were the key results of the meeting, only a few would be able to deliver a structured reply.
Meetings tend to be messy, unorganised and for the sake of attendance and discussion versus the “doing” element of the work. A long continued tradition continued in an effort to promote team engagement. But this doesn’t have to be the case, you can have effective meetings or no meeting at all.
Tim Ferriss summarises this well in his best-selling book, the 4hr WorkWeek.
“Meetings are the easiest ways to waste time. Back when I worked at a startup, I would go to our weekly Friday meeting just to avoid work and not do anything. The snacks were also great incentives.”
“You can probably relate to having to attend meetings that will not help you do your job better in any way.”
SOURCE: Millennials’ Guide to Life
So how can I get started?
Meetings can be easy refined and controlled even by your own efforts, as part of a company or not.
Begin by adopting a goal-orientated focus around meetings, for your next 10 meetings ask those who are running the agenda a simple question “What is the aim of this meeting?”, if they can’t answer directly and simply show you a long agenda list, suggest a desirable outcome for the meeting for all parties.
Avoid unnecessary meetings going onwards, if it doesn’t seem to drive your work forward, ask to be kept updated on the meeting notes and that you can’t attend due to workload concerns. Tim has some effective and more proactive ways to work this to help you get out of all future meetings.
We recommend reading Tim Ferris’s content on how to actively approach meeting etiquette to avoid any offence caused by poking structural values of your company. Here’s a great article where Tim dives into how he works.
3. Pomodoro Timing
Now you’ve analysed your meetings and day theming, it’s time to get specific with your time. Pomodoro timers are one of the best way to increase the quality of your work sessions and save yourself time in the long run.
The Pomodoro method is simple.
Set a timer for 25-minutes, focus intensely on a task that will take no longer than 25-minutes, then take a 5-minute break. Repeat the cycle up to 4 times, then take a 30-minute break. Here’s how it works:
Working in short bursts of time can help to improve your attention on a set task and provide you with a workflow you can apply across your workday.
The best thing about the Pomodoro timer is it integrates breaks into your routine, providing you with bursts of relaxation to help keep your flow state of productivity across the day.
These planned breaks tend to have positive effect on your productivity by helping you to mentally break away from intense, labour intense tasks.
Developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980’s, the technique has been expanded and developed over time to cater to today’s modern world with hundreds of pomodoro apps ready for you to get started!
4. Downsize Email Time
Email is one of our most used tools of the day.
This can be damaging. Just checking your inbox 20 times across your day can distract you from an important task or project. Aim to reduce this to a more respectable amount of say 4–5 times per day, to help reduce stress levels.
Checking your email tends to waste time and pressure your time doing focused work. This is a theory that Cal Newport supports in his book Deep Work, suggested that focusing on smaller, less important tasks can distract from the more intense projects that need your keen eye.
Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
Taken from Cal Newport’s book Deep Work
Once you can get into the workflow of “deep work” you’ll be able to avoid nudges and pressures of work, getting into the most important pieces of your day. So, try avoiding the inbox every 5-minutes.
Check it every 1–2 hours instead to allow yourself dedicated focus time with no disruptions. This is one of the hardest things to adopt and will take time to manage email once again and take control of this bad habit.
Cal extends further about how long emails can improve the quality of your interactions, a 2016 post that will get you thinking even more.
Let us know your recommendations or tips for saving time and effort when it comes to workload, we’d love to hear all your productivity tips and tricks.
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📝Recommend Read — Reduce the Number of Printed Emails in your Office (READ HERE) 📧
