5 Ways to Reduce Multitasking, Increase Focus and Boost Efficiency  

It goes without saying that a working woman is a mighty busy woman.  Females these days navigate modern cultural pressures that often demand both high performance at work, and owning more of the personal life responsibilities at home.  At these stressful intersections, it is your efficiency strategies that can power you through the bulk of these daily challenges.

What do we mean by efficiency?  We mean the cost of input for the output produced — or the best use of resources with the least waste of time and effort.

While we are all pressed for time, it is relatively simple to increase efficiency at work and life without increasing time spent. Here are five ways to do it:

Tackle One Task at a Time
Having multiple projects on our plate can paralyze us into inefficiency.  This is especially true when we go back and forth between tasks.  The number one culprit that encourages us to do this is our work email.  When we are juggling multiple tasks, projects, emails and deadlines, it is easy to bounce from thing to thing, killing our efforts to actually get any one thing done.

Instead of working on a task until you arbitrarily decide to switch, you can drastically increase efficiency when you focus on one task and set a measured result that you vow you must reach until you can direct your attention to another task.  For example, finish that blog post, answer half of your client emails, or write out at least half of your marketing strategy.

Not only does this give you smaller, manageable goals, it also motivates you to hit foreseeable work milestones in an efficient amount of time.

Stay Calm, and Invest Time in You
Life can be stressful at the best of times, and when everyone around you is stressing out, it can be really difficult to stay calm.  So in order to be able to maintain focus and avoid work burnout, it’s important to invest some time to work on your own peace of mind. Exercise and meditation are probably two of the most effective ways to reduce stress and help you manage your mental state of mind.

Excusing yourself from your desk or work situation and taking a walk to the park can be just the mind- clearing you need to refocus on the task at hand.  Also, learning to meditate anytime and anyplace with handy meditation tools like the Calm app allow you to incorporate mind-clearing exercises into your daily life and routine.  Being comfortable with taking a minute or two to completely clear your mind, to not stress, and think of the big picture can not only save your overall health, it can make you more productive.

Embrace Technology — Efficiency is Its Destiny
Technology is finally maturing to the point that the investment is not more complicated than actually useful.  The goal of technology was always around making our lives easier, and for the ultimate life hacks on efficiency look no further than the Amazon Echo, a smart speaker you can talk to through its “Alexa Voice” technology.  Various features of Amazon Echo make it a fantastic tool of convenience, allowing customers to control smart home lights, receive live match updates, pay bills, order necessities, and accomplish many more tasks through its voice commands.

Example: I’m standing in my kitchen, making tortilla soup for dinner.  I need four cups of chicken broth, and all I have is a 32-ounce package of Caldo de Pollo broth powder; I have no idea if that’s enough.  “Alexa, how many ounces are in four cups?”  “Four cups is thirty-two fluid ounces,” comes the voice from the other room.  Well, fantastic Alexa!  Doing me a measuring solid.  I pour the whole thing in.

Take the technological assistance, cherish it, and breeze through your home chores.

Getting Organized: Google Keep vs. Evernote
When I want to write a document, build a budget, or create slides, I turn to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, respectively.  Now with the release of Google Keep on ioS, you can make quick notes and lists on the go. Evernote is another powerful tool to use to get organized.   Both Google Keep and Evernote are available on major mobile platforms and the web.

Google Keep is useful for those who just want to make quick notes and lists on the go and aren’t interested in creating a deep archive of content.  It’s also good for sharing lists with others, and is completely free.

Evernote is a better choice if you want a database of notes, lists and web content.  It has an endless list of features, both free and more robust paid versions.  (While the basic Evernote plan costs nothing, more advanced features require a plan that starts at $25 a year.)

Set Blocks of Time for Email
Setting healthy boundaries around checking emails is probably one of the most powerful personal efficiency strategies you can do for your time.  Constant email alerts popping up on your phone or desktop can really break your focus.  Instead of reading every email that hits your inbox, try turning off your notifications and only checking messages at set intervals.  Or when you’re working on a tight deadline, set up an automatic reply to curtail client or customer expectations for the short-term.

Conclusively, success comes down to what we’re able to do within the 24 hours we all have to work with.  So while we would all love to add some extra hours to our days, in the absence of that ability, these strategies should certainly help to maximize work/life habits and productivity.

Written by: Anna Anisin, Sr Marketing Consultant, Domino Data Lab
SXSW Session: Domino Data Lab Data Science Meet Up