The key to using time efficiently is being purposeful.
1. Plan your day
Before you leave each night make a list of the tasks you need to complete the next day. This will help you hit the ground running and not get distracted by overnight emails. When you get into work start attacking the most important task. This small but intentional act of putting a plan together will go a long way in helping you, use time efficiently.
2. Avoid meetings that are non-value adding.
Meetings can be important but often managers call them to figure out what is going on and to get “status”. These types of meetings can be a real killer of effectivity at work.
If you are in a leadership role and must have meetings, make them working meetings where team members are actively engaging with one another to come up with solutions. Value your team members time by keeping meeting groups small and invite only those who are essential to what you are trying to accomplish.
3. Don’t answer emails right away.
If you’re in the middle of a task, finish it. Stopping to answer an email often times requires starting a new task, killing your flow. Once you have answered that email you need reengage into the task you were working on often times forgetting where you left off. This restart consumes time and usually causes you to redo something you just did.
If someone is trying to contact you for something critical let them call you. If they never called it probably wasn’t that urgent, simply respond once you’ve come to a good stopping point.
4. Find your flow.
Figure out what environment and routine works best for you. Maybe you need to put on those noise cancelling headphones and play the London symphony Orchestra to get into your groove. Or maybe you need to put your head down and work for 90 minutes and take a break for 15 minutes and repeat.
Do some testing and self-reflection to figure out what helps you the most and try to get into that routine when you need to get things done.
Check out more efficiency tips here.