I'm trying to be more efficient at work. What are some good tricks to be more efficient and minimize procrastination and time wasting?
I'll start off...create your own deadlines throughout the day for every task you have to do, making sure to write them down. This helps because people are always more efficient when they have a time constraint, even if it is fabricated.
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I've probably mentioned this before but time blocking and the Franklin planner (google it). Time blocking will depend on the individual. I find I'm better with analytical stuff in the morning and better at selling noon and later, so I focus my activities on those times.
The main thing I've gotte from the Franklin planner is by making smallish, manageable to do lists everyday (write this report, start this proposal, call these 10 people). And I rank order them so I'm not likely to forget about the most important activity. The planner also forces me to look at how busy my day is in addition to my to do list. For people that don't have meetings this is meaningless but if I'm spending 80% of my day in meetings my to do list is smaller than if my calendar is relatively empty.
Having smaller to do lists also forces you to do more I think. If I had a list of 100 things I wanted to do, nothing would get done. But 5 or 6 things? I can do that.
I also don't rely on my memory to ensure I get things done, I put my most important to do items in front of my face: on paper, in outlook reminders, whatever. If it's visible, it's harder to ignore. If it's in the back of your mind, it will likely stay there.
Agreed!
Good advice.
Try using some operant conditioning, like you would use to train a mouse...ie give yourself a reward if you complete a task in time and a punishment if you don't. Make the rewards and punishments proportional to the size of the task. I think it's harder to willingly reward yourself when you didn't do anything, so that somewhat enforces the hack
tell someone about your 'fabricated' deadlines.. "I will finish this task by 2 pm".. they don't even have to check in on you but it will make you work faster just so you could tell them that you did finish that task at 2pm
Simply writing down a "To Do" is what I do.. Some days there's 10 things, and other days there is only 2. In any event it frees my mind and is my own way of keeping myself accountable.
I use ASANA - both online and the app to bucket ideas that come to me at random times. My ADD goes wild a lot and if I write down my ideas I can forget about them and not get distracted from work/gym/etc. Then, every Sunday afternoon I run through my buckets of to dos / ideas and choose implement what I believe to be the most effective into my next weeks schedule.
The key is to make rules and develop a structure. Without structure you are doomed to fail in the long term.
Pro Tip: Anything that is measured gets evaluated. Ie: You're more likely to recognize the difference between results oriented tasks un-actionable bs tasks that make you feel busy but have minimal outcomes. I review the effectiveness (real results of my accomplished tasks and either can them or keep em)
Another tip is do the absolutely most important thing of that day immediately when you wake up. If its personal, you have a 10x more likely chance of waking up early and accomplishing it efficiently then beating yourself up to finish it at night.
Most importantly, read "Making Ideas Happen". It will change your mindset on how you think of productivity.
Hope that helps.
I wanted to become more efficient, but then I remembered that I work in IB, where efficiency is even rarer than a unicorn. "Are you in the office at 9:00 AM? Great, we'll give you work at 7:00 PM this evening."
Fair enough. A lot of what I mentioned assumes you have some control over your day, which I know is a foreign concept to bankers, oh well
My post wasn't supposed to be a dig at you or anything. Just a comment.
"I wake up every morning and what do I do? I create an agenda for the day, which is a sub-agenda for the month, which is in itself a pie slice of my agenda for life."
Check out this 5 part video series by Mike Sanders on the topic of Multitasking.
Being efficient doesn't equal constantly working, poindexter
Having to plan my day is just another thing I'm going to procrastinate on.
Organization and taking your time to do it right the first time.
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