How many times in the past week, you wished that there was more time in your day? By following the following tips, you can get more work done in the same amount of time and stop yourself from wasting time.
Follow Strict Routine
By having a routine you will develop a habit. So your mind and body will accept such type of work at that time so the work will become very easy to do.
Also you will cut down on the amount of decisions you need to make in a day; reducing mental load and freeing up your time and energy for more important things.
Consistency always wins over hard work. If something is worth doing then stick to it for a lifetime; else don’t do it. And when you do something for a long period of time, you get better at it.
Be Effective Over Active
To be effective you need to first know what is it that you need to get done. Then you can differentiate between the things which are getting you closer to the goal and the things which are fluff. Importance, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, your high priority goals.
Use Time Management Matrix to classify all your activities into four groups:
- Important and urgent
- Important and not urgent
- Unimportant and urgent
- Unimportant and not urgent
Try to focus your energy on the second quadrant because these activities will build your capacity to produce more, in other words make you better.
There are some companies which are adopting 4 days work week. Monday to Thursday are working days and Friday to Sunday are off days. After this shift to shorter workweek, employees started to focus on only important work as a result of which some days they have to wonder, what to do next because all the planned work was completed before time.
Also make a list of things you are willing to sacrifice and the things you don’t want to sacrifice, because sometimes the cost of getting something is more than the benefits. Like success at work but at the cost of family.
Planning Your Day
Live in the present, focus on the moment. If you can spend the next second according to the plan, then and only then you will spend your days, weeks and whole life according to the plan. Spend your every second wisely as if you are in an emergency and can’t afford any mistakes.
When planning keep these things in mind:
- Keep it simple. Don’t add any good to have features because the more complicated the task becomes the less will be your desire to start it. And longer it will take to complete it. Remember good is the enemy of great. Good to have features might end up jeopardizing the whole project.
- Who has done it before? Try to find out others who have done the same task as you are planning to do. This way you will not fall for the same mistakes.
- Use Tools. Tools enable us to not only speed up tasks but enable us to do things that were not possible before. But sometimes using tools (or wrong tools) might complicate things up, so don’t forget the dark side of tools.
- Use Templates. Creating templates for the tasks that comes up on a regular basis will save you a lot of time. For example you send email to someone to get designs made, you can create a template and reuse it again and again; no need to think every time about what to write in the email.
Tidy Up your Belongings
There are many files and apps on our devices which we don’t use. Similarly there are lot of stuff in our homes and offices which we haven't touched for years. Getting rid of the things which we don’t use and organizing the things which we make our lives a lot better. And we will start to give more importance and care to the things we use regularly.
Another cool way to make us care more for the tools that help us to achieve so much is by thinking of them as living beings. This way you will be mindful not to hurt their feelings or put stress on them. And do their regular maintenance like changing oil of the car.
When things are organized you will have a peace in mind and will not feel overwhelmed by the clutter. Like 50 tabs open in a web browser. To cope with tabs problem, I copy the website link into my personal knowledge management app and then close the tabs.
Another benefit of getting your house in order is that, we cut back on the time wasted in searching for things. If you add up all the time that is wasted due to being disorganized, it amounts to weeks of wasted time.
Optimize Workflow
Most of the time our workflow lacks common sense. Like businesses makes rules and procedures but fail to update them when on ground reality changes.
One big mistake managers make is to allow the monkey 🙊 of their subordinates to jump on their back. If the worker under you is having difficulty with some task and wants your help, then don’t say I’ll look at it. Because then the worker will stop working on it and would have successfully transferred his burden onto you. Instead give him instructions on how to do it.
Try to get as much benefit with any action as possible in one go. Like exercise and also listen to an audio book, this will create a synergy. You never got time to read a non-fiction book and you hate exercise; by bundling these two things together you will start to love going to the gym because then you can listen to the book.
Increase your Energy Level
Sleep
Sleep is a necessity of our body, just like food, oxygen and pee. There are immediate and grave consequences of under sleeping. When this need of our body is unfulfilled we feel
Healthy Diet
The need for brain and other supplements, show the dire state of our eating habits. When we eat healthy diet, consisting of vegetables and meat, and avoid unhealthy foods like soft drinks, effects on our energy level are instant.
Exercise
When we don’t use our muscles they atrophy. You won’t know the benefits of exercise until you do it and gain some muscle mass, just like if you have never smelled rose 🌹, you won’t know how it smells like.
But remember to do a complete work out that includes all the muscles like the one in Karate 🥋.
Be at Peace
If there is something nagging at you like a fight you had with someone, deal with it first and then start working. To deal with these things is not to try and forget it but to think about it and relive it with different angles.
Measure Time Spent
What gets measured gets improved. So if you measure how much time is spent on different activities during the day, you will get a clear picture of where your priorities lie.
One way to slow time is to break down a task in very small chunks and then give each task 5 mins to complete. When we start focusing on it, the task gets completed before the time runs out.
Listen to the podcast about this topic, in Urdu: Google Podcast, Apple Podcast
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