10 Tips To Get More Done and Save Time!

Work in the past few years has changed drastically. Many people are working from home full time, some have and hybrid mix and some are still 100% office based. Whatever your work situation one thing has not changed – the need to get things done in what seems like, not enough hours in the day! To do this you need you need to be able to visualize your goal, set a plan to get there, and make sure it is accomplished on time. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to become more productive and make sure you are getting urgent tasks completed without you feeling overwhelmed.

Here are 10 Techniques to getting more done

1. Set Smart Goals

If you are wanting to get more done but are not sure how to do so, using the well-known technique ‘smart goals’ will make sure you are setting realistic, achievable goals for yourself and / or your team. It will help you understand and be more specific in visualizing what your end goal may look like, and show what directions need to be taken to progress. Setting smart goals also helps make your targets measurable, enabling you to break it down into smaller pieces such as deadlines or time frames, which you will then be able to identify what you are on track with, and what needs improvements. Using this technique, you will be able to also see if what you are trying to accomplish is actually attainable and reachable and it will help make it relevant and motivating. In summary?SMART goals?show you a way in which you can use your time wisely to make sure each goal will be completed on target with the right result.

2. Use a Daily List

Each day you will have a set of tasks that need to be completed. One way to make sure all of our tasks get completed is by using a checklist. Using a checklist is a useful and easy tool to help you get daily tasks completed on time. Start either the night before or first thing in the morning. Either electronically or on paper, sat in view all day on your desk. Segregate your list by morning, afternoon and by hour and then start to prioritize with the urgent and most important tasks first. Remember to be realistic and not overload your list and allow some free time for unexpected things and breaks. Cross off completed tasks and if any are left – move them onto the next day. Be careful if you find you are moving the same task over each night, ask yourself how urgent and important is it!

3. Work out What Wastes Time and Take Action

Working out what is wasting your time is crucial to getting more done. It could be for example that your team isn’t working on the priority tasks, you answer every email that comes into your inbox, or even attending meetings you might not need to. Whatever reason you may be wasting valuable time, track, analyze and reassess how you can do better and take action for improvements. Why not do a time log for a week and then review it. Try setting a timer for how long each task takes and check to see if what is on the log are urgent, important and relevant to your goals.

?4.?Eat That Frog Technique

One of the best methods you can develop is organizing your tasks by priority. The process named ‘Eat That Frog’ is used for practicing the habit of tackling your most vital tasks first and will have a huge impact on making sure you are getting more done. Also known as the ‘ABCDE Method’ it helps you structure your plan for the day by creating a list from A-E. At the beginning of your list are the A elements which are the most important tasks that may have serious consequences if not completed. At the bottom of your list will have the E elements. These will be the tasks you could eliminate and will not make a difference if they are completed or not. ‘Eat That Frog’ encourages you to tackle the A items on the list first thing in the day.

?5.?Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro technique is a strategy that is not to complete tasks but to rewire our brains for initiative-taking and consistency within a short number of simple steps. It requires you to prep and plan your day then work a full 25-minute session by completing as much focused work as possible. After you can reward yourself with a short break to give your mind the chance to recharge and recover before going on to do another three 25-minute hard-working sessions (with short breaks) before another longer break. The aim of this method is to allow ourselves to give our best to a task, without the task getting the better of us and causing burnout.

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6. Organise and Manage Emails

To get more work done, you must master the skill of organization with your emails and your inbox. A disorganized and cluttered inbox can lead to unanswered urgent messages. Having your inbox organized, it becomes quicker to find specific messages, and even easier to scrap the messages you no longer need. Regularly having a cleanout, as well as creating labels and folders and unsubscribing to pointless emails will help you get started on becoming more organized and productive. If you feel like you don’t have the time, look into downloading a free automatic sorting software that can help you manage and separate those important emails from the not-so-important emails automatically. Outlook has many tools you can apply to help – there are lots of free videos on YouTube.

?7.?Delegate Tasks

When you?delegate?some of your work, you free up your time and achieve more on a daily basis. By delegating the non-essential and repetitive tasks to your team, you can focus on more vital tasks that need to be completed. Make sure to delegate the jobs to the correct members to avoid future tasks being added to your list if anything goes wrong. Also make sure not to just “dump” work you don’t like – remember delegation should help you achieve more but also help the other person grow. It also doesn’t mean abdicating responsibility, you still need to make sure the task is completed.

8. Manage Meetings

When it comes to getting more done, ask yourself “is it I attend this meeting” or “do I need to be in all of it”. Is the meeting relevant to your goals? Only attend?meetings?you need to and are in direct relevance to your role / goals. Also ask – do we need a meeting for this? You can use that extra time to be productive with other daily tasks that need to be completed.

9. Use Urgency Importance Matrix

The Urgency Importance Matrix, also known as the Eisenhower Matrix, is used to help prioritize tasks by urgency and?importance. The method helps you understand what activities you should focus on, and those you should delegate or eliminate. It also shows you how to sensibly manage your priorities and optimize your time management. This method is split into 4 sections A-D which show you the important, urgent, and not important or urgent categories. Using the urgency Importance Matrix, you must first perform tasks that you see as important and urgent. Afterward, you will go on to spend time on activities that are important, but less urgent. Any other activities that are seen as less important or urgent, you can delegate them to another member of staff or discard them altogether.

10. Make Use of Technology

For some, having a form of technology nearby would be seen as a distraction, but with practiced discipline, technology can be effectively used to work more efficiently.

Making use of free apps can be beneficial to your workday and make it easier for you to be reminded of important meetings, tasks, and events taking place. A great app to consider is the latest version of your calendar, which can be used to organize and schedule all those vital projects and events as well as be reminded on the day. CloudOn, GoogleDriver, and ActiveInBox are also some examples of desktop technology apps that can help you get more work done effortlessly and includes a feature to share documents across channels to give you better communication within your team. Another great tool to use to stay organized is Microsoft Office Rules.?Rules is a way to set automatic actions to your outlook inbox which you would usually do manually. If your inbox is full of unwanted emails and overloading important emails, this may be a good choice for you. It lets you create specific rules which automatically go through a sorting process and send the unwanted emails to a different folder.