How to be Effective at Work
Being effective and focused while at work can be difficult. You plug in your laptop and start pulling up a few files. Before you know it, the day is over! You didn’t even get started on the deliverable that is due by 7pm…how did that happen?! Don’t worry, we’ve all been there!
Here are some ways you can be more effective at work and make sure you’re making the best use of your time.
*This post contains affiliate links.
Be Proactive
Get things done ahead of time! If you actively take responsibility and control over a situation, you’re able to execute before something happens. It’s much more difficult to be in a reactive state, where you have to try your best to troubleshoot a situation as it’s occurring. If you can get ahead of the task, you’re more prepared and can leverage resources and solve problems in a more efficient manner.
How to be proactive: Keep a running list of events or projects coming up in the future. Know what needs to be done and when important deadlines are. Actively think through potential problems that can occur and how you would go about solving it. Ask others about what they’re doing if they’re working on the same project. The key here is to just actively think about what you need to do a few weeks ahead!
Related: How to be positively relentless at work
Write Down Your Goals to be More Effective
Make a to do list that you can stick with, and check things off as you go. If your to do list ends up being extremely long and overwhelming, cut it down into blocks. Identify what you need to get done each day instead, or focus on tasks that absolutely have to be done first.
And on that note….
Tackle Urgent Items First
This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people try and tackle smaller projects over urgent projects because they’re quicker! You’ll probably be a lot stressed (and a lot more efficient) if you just dig into what needs to be done ASAP. Get those items crossed off your to do list so you can focus on other tasks at hand. However, this doesn’t mean drowning doing urgent items! Identify which items have a quick turnaround or need to go to senior leaders and focus on those first. This will help you manage your tasks better and be more effective at work.
Easy ways to prioritize tasks:
- Buy a Planner from Amazon
- Use Microsoft OneNote to create daily and weekly checklists
Take Time to Schedule Your Meetings
This is super easy to do, and spending ten minutes scheduling your meetings can make your day extremely productive! You’ll no longer have to keep reminding yourself to call someone or set time to talk to clients.
- Microsoft Outlook: Outlook calendar saves my life!! It’s the easiest way to schedule all of your business needs and get reminders when it’s time to do things.
- Simply Schedule: Plugin to help you schedule appointments
Automate Tasks That Slow Work Down
While it might take some time to automate everyday tasks, this will quickly pay off in the long run! Figure out which tasks are repetitive and require little to no brain power and find a way to streamline them! You’ll then be able to focus your time on other important tasks, thus making your work more effective.
Some apps that can help you automate tasks:
- Docusign: For facilitating contracts and signed documents
- Microsoft Office: The Suite has a full set of productivity tools you can use to make life easier!
- Mailchimp: Email marketing app that can automatically send tailored emails for you
- Surveymonkey: Allows you to easily send and analyze survey results
- Eventbrite: Event platform that allows you to quickly automate Salesforce accounts
- QuickBooks: Allows online businesses to automate bookkeeping
- Shopify: Allows business owners to set up an online store & sell products and can easily be automated with integration of other products, like ServiceNow
- Slack: An app that congregates all communication in one place and makes it easy to reach out to others
Stop Multitasking
Focus on one project at a time, and really allow yourself to zone into it.
Personally, this has been the hardest thing for me to do! Sometimes I’ll be answering an email when I get another email about an urgent task and a text from my boss all at once.
It takes a lot of practice but once you stop leaving items unfinished, you’ll be able to get more out of the way faster and can then more productively move on to the next task. There will never be any ‘accidentally forgetting’ if you focus on one task at a time!
Don’t Work Reactively
This probably goes against what you think when you imagine being efficient, but the key in solving problems is taking a second to think!
By reacting quickly to a problem, you probably will end up making a mistake and have to go back and fix the problem again (I’ve done this many times!). If you instead focus on being present, breathe, take a few minutes to think about the problem, and then react or solve, you’re forcing yourself to analyze different solutions and find the best one.
[RELATED: How to be Positively Relentless in Your Career]
[RELATED: 7 Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Promoted At Work]
