YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD all about working ‘smarter not harder’, right?
You know, when you head into work every day, that there are tasks that need to get done and tasks that really need to get done, and everything else in between.
There are many ways to make your work day more productive (and these hacks can help in your non-work life too) – and we’ve rounded up seven of them for you to incorporate into your day.
Prepare to become a super-efficient version of your former self.
Keeping a ‘diary’ might sound like something your teenage self did back in the day, but the ‘Bullet journal method‘ is not that kind of diary.
This is a journal for grownups designed to keep track of just about everything in your life – and it’s completely flexible and adaptable to your needs.
Tracking what you do, have done and need to do is the only way to see how much you’ve got done or need to get done during the day. Coming up with a foolproof method on your own might be too hard – which is where this method comes in.
Developed to keep track of all those thoughts, bits of paper floating around, ideas, dates, things to do, and things to remember, the Bullet journal method definitely has modern living, and all that that entails, at heart.
It’s completely flexible for your particular needs. You may go the whole hog and keep the index up to date and a thing of beauty, or you may jack in the index altogether and just keep the method of assigning tasks. It’s up to you.
There are lots of videos on YouTube of how people have adapted their own Bullet journals, so mess around until you find the right way for you.
Depending on where you work, there’s a strong chance that emails are the bane of your existence.
They’re the digital equivalent of someone waving their hand in your face sporadically, demanding attention and needing to be dealt with now.
One way around this is to assign a time to check your emails. Of course, this depends on your job, but if you can do that it can make a huge difference to your day.
Bundling similar tasks together and doing them at once (such as checking emails), means you won’t be interrupting yourself multiple times during the day to pay attention to something that more than likely didn’t need your attention.
As you probably know, once you break your focus and concentration it takes time to get back into it, so if you do that frequently during the day (every time you check your email for example) you’ll find you’re working harder but not smarter.
As above with emails, with some roles, you might not be able to do this – but if you can, switch off your phone, or schedule time for calls.
The same reasoning applies as with reading emails in one go – it takes you out of your ‘flow’, and you take time getting back to the task at hand, which ultimately means every task takes you longer – for a call that may not have been important in the first place.
Now we’re not saying make yourself entirely uncontactable, of course – but just to bear in mind that minismising common distractions will help your work day be so much more productive.
Eisenhower (yes, that Eisenhower – the 34th president of the United States), came up with this method of productivity in an effort to work out what was important, urgent, could be delegated or could be abandoned altogether.
Too often, we confuse urgent with important, or being busy with getting a lot done. This means that our attention is in the wrong place with really doing what needs to be done, rather than what’s grabbing your attention most. Never mind faffing about on the internet…
With this method, you’ll be able to see what’s important rather than what’s urgent and what you can happily hand over to someone else, or just ignore, leaving you to focus on the actually important things you need to do.
Genius.
Now that you’ve worked out what’s important versus what’s urgent, it’s time to work out a method of how best to get the work done. One way that works well is the ‘Pomodoro Method’.
This method involves setting a timer for 25 minutes, and working till the timer rings. When it does you get a 5 minute break. This is designed to improve focus and reduce procrastination as well as scheduling in little breaks during the day.
Work can be divided into ‘pomodoros’ (25 minute chunks) and after working with this method for a while you can see how many ‘pomodoros’ a task is likely to take and assign accordingly.
Here’s how the Pomodoro method works -
It might seem counter-intuitive to take time out of your work day today in order to plan for tomorrow, but knowing what’s on your plate in advance will be a big help in the morning. (This is where the Bullet journal will come in handy – you’ll see what you did or didn’t get done today and can assign for tomorrow.)
Rather than having to take that time in the morning to reacquaint yourself with what you were up to yesterday and decide how you want to tackle it, you’ll hit the ground running if you know you have to write that email, or make that phonecall before a certain time, instead of remembering five minutes after.
Fail to plan and plan to fail and all that…
Right before you walk out the door, take five minutes and tidy up that desk or workspace – you’ll thank Future You in the morning.
It might seem like a small thing to do, but approaching a desk (or other workspace) that is clean and organised, sends a little message to your brain that you’re ready to get to work, rather than that you have to spend some time sorting out everything before you can get started.
So, just as with planning your day in advance, you’re ready to get cracking the minute you get into work.
Win win.
‘Hacks’ are just smarter ways of doing everyday things – like using an app to control your heating when you’re away from home. Head over to Electric Ireland to find out how you could control your heating remotely with Nest and Climote - just one of many simple ideas to make your life better.
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