You’re committed to making 2022 your greatest professional year ever. Although you are very motivated, you are having some difficulty putting your plans into action.These suggestions are simple to put into practice and will get you one step closer to making 2022 the year that you genuinely step up your professional life, whether you want to save yourself time and irritation or do a better job of focusing on what really counts. Here are some work hacks that make your job so much easier.
1. Utilize the Pomodoro Technique and take periodic breaks.
Are you the kind of person who can spend hours at their work without noticing the passage of time? Another possibility is that you are the sort to easily become sidetracked.
The Pomodoro Technique is useful in both situations. You must divide your workday into shorter, more manageable segments, or “pomodoros,” and keep track of them with a timer using this method of time management. You’ll work for a quarter of an hour at a time before taking a five-minute break. Four pomodoros are completed, and then you treat yourself to a lengthier respite of roughly 20 minutes.
How does this help you? By creating a sense of urgency, it improves your attention since you’ll naturally want to complete as much work as you can in the allotted 25 minutes. Additionally, it makes sure that you often stand up from your desk, which is good for both your body and mind!
2. Utilize email batching to save time.
Email is the misery of our lives for the majority of us. I’m one of those persons that always has the inbox tab open and can’t help but check as soon as I see a new message has come.
But here’s the thing—I know that seriously hinders my productivity and attention. I regularly find myself tearing my focus away from what I’m doing in order to read an email that is probably not that urgent or significant.
For this reason, email batching, in which you are only permitted to view and answer to emails twice or three times each day at predetermined intervals, is so popular. It will lessen your need to continually check your inbox and stop email from disrupting your productivity.
3. Use a coding system for your to-do list to manage your energy.
Your energy levels usually fluctuate throughout the day. You may be someone who truly doesn’t find their groove until the afternoon, or you may be ready and eager to tackle your to-do list as soon as you get your morning coffee.
More than just controlling your time, being effective also involves managing your energy. It’s wiser to save meaningless jobs for when you’re exhausted and more difficult work for when you’re at your most concentrated.
Use a straightforward coding scheme to designate where tasks lie on your energy spectrum after creating your task list. The symbols that work best for you are yours to chose. Use an up arrow, for instance, to denote intellectually challenging jobs (such as making that presentation), and a down arrow, for chores that are much more ordinary (like filling out your expense report). Alternately, use a happy and sad face. Or just begin the harder-working duties.
Although you do have some freedom in this area, writing your to-do list in this manner will enable you to properly maximize the time you have during the workday.
4. Quit turning off notifications because it makes you anxious.
While it would be convenient to attribute all of our interruptions to the environment, we are aware that this is not the case. Most of our focus-stealers, particularly those caused by digital alerts, are voluntary.
It’s not exactly fresh advice to turn off your alerts when you’re trying to get work done, but I’ll bet you haven’t done it yet.
Gather your guts and attempt this at last. On your phone, disable all push notifications. Close the email window. Put your instant chat platform on “do not disturb.” You’ll then get some much-needed peace and quiet to concentrate on your task.
5. Establish priorities by creating your to-do list early.
Do you make a list of your responsibilities every morning? I don’t blame you; I was the same way once. The drawback of such strategy is that it gives everyone else the power to determine what the most important tasks are for the day. These items automatically deserve a space on your task list (even if they are not time-sensitive) since you are likely not generating your list until you have responded to emails and other requests that have come in since you last checked in.
Try creating your to-do list for the next day instead, before you log out for the evening. Instead of allowing your email entirely dictate your calendar, you’re far more likely to write down the bigger, more critical tasks then. You’ll be instantly reminded of what you really intended to concentrate on when you get back to work tomorrow.
6. Use templates instead of starting from scratch.
There are repeated chores in every profession, but it doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch every time. You may save time and assure consistency by using templates.
Do you frequently send emails that are similar to this one? To rapidly insert it into a blank message and tweak the specifics, save it as a canned answer. Do you always begin your writing projects with a blank page? Make a template with the minimum essentials included for you.
In a similar spirit, making a cheat sheet for yourself is beneficial. Bring all of those facts together in a useful document that resides immediately on your desktop so you can easily locate them when you need them, whether it’s instructions you’re always searching through email threads to discover or photo dimensions you can never remember.
