Interviewer Interview Prep
Impactful Mentees
Benefits of a Mentor
Advice for First-Time Managers
Overcoming the 18-month Itch
Dressing for Your Style
Interview Style Tips
Women's Stocking Stuffers
Gift the Busy Traveler
Father’s Day Gift Guide
Airport Layover Activities
Traveling & Eating Healthy
Travel Like a Boss Lady
The Dual California Life
Gifts for Thanksgiving
Summer Reading List
Top Leisurely Reads
New Year, New Books
Life Lessons from a Sitcom
Oprah, Amy or Amal?
Tips for Practical, Easy-to-Implement Ways to Raise Productivity at Work
Countless new books, articles, and seminars each year focus on how we can boost our productivity, get organized, and make the most of our days at work. Don’t get me wrong; the overwhelming majority of them are filled with useful information, clever tips, and inspiring ideas for ways to become more efficient. However, what works best for me are often the most simple of strategies. I’ve taken my favorite tips from what I’ve read, and also what I’ve personally found effective, to create a simple three-step system for staying organized and boosting my own productivity. Here are my top three time savers for staying efficient, effective and productive each day:
1. Calendar Everything
By adding important tasks to your calendar, you are ensuring that it will stay top-of-mind and will not get overlooked throughout the day. It is the best form of a to-do list – and as long as you stick to the plan, you will get everything done that you had hoped to achieve.
Also, at the end of each day, I take it a step further by adding a block of time in my calendar — I use Outlook, but Gmail and iCal work too — to prepare for my meetings and make a plan for the following day. Yes — I effectively have a meeting with myself, before I head to my “real” meetings! This ensures that I am always prepared for the particular meeting I’m attending, and that I start the next day feeling calm, in control, and with a clear understanding of what it is I am hoping to accomplish.
Otherwise, I’ve found I get absorbed in tasks that are important, but are clearly not time-sensitive — and the things that I really need to accomplish are pushed aside. It is so easy to get lost in the shuffle of a busy day; instead, spending a few minutes of time strategizing the night before has proven time and again to keep me on track.
2. Plan Ahead to Play Catch-Up
In a perfect world, I’d have an entire day each week just to catch up on things that I didn’t finish for the rest of the week – for example, maybe I started to outline a new article, but a call came in that I needed to take, and it was never finished.
In any case, sometimes even with the best intentions, I start a project that for one reason or another doesn’t get completed. To help prevent that, I always block off at least one-half of a day per week for catching up. I like using Friday afternoons for doing this, as it lets me go into the weekend feeling organized, but I’ve found that Wednesday afternoons also work well, since they get me through the rest of the week as organized and on top of my work as possible.
3. Commit to Consistency
If email is important to your business, spend time every morning each day – preferably at the same hour — to respond to critical emails. Or if you need to make marketing calls, schedule specific hours when you’ll focus only on doing that.
Why this works: having a schedule and a routine that you stick to can keep you calm and productive, even if the remainder of your day goes haywire. And having a set block of time, for at least a few hours a day, devoted entirely to a specific and vital task, will ensure that the most important part of your job never falls by the wayside.
Summing up: In order to avoid feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, or worse, that you’ve spent hours doing nothing, make sure you’ve prioritized your responsibilities, prepared for meetings, and that you allow yourself adequate time to address the most pressing needs of your job. With this in place, it’s possible to get a little bit closer to achieving that coveted, serenity-inducing sense of balance in life that we all crave.
