While working hard is often a key to productivity, working smarter is essential for efficiency. When you work smarter, you seize opportunities to streamline activities. Plus, you’re more adept at selecting priorities and coordinating the efforts of others, should the need arise.
Often, working smarter, not harder, is easier than most professionals expect. If you want to improve your efficiency, here are a few simple ways to get started.
Embrace Single-Tasking
For the vast majority of people, genuine multitasking isn’t actually possible. Instead of accomplishing two (or more) things at once, you’re actually rapidly cycling between the activities. Every time you transition, you have to take a moment to regain your bearings. As a result, you’re sacrificing efficiency, not improving it.
Instead of multitasking, make single-tasking your go-to approach. Focus on each individual activity until it’s complete, allowing you to give it your all. Then, transition to a new task only when the first one is finished.
Know Your Rhythm
While there are benefits to tackling your hardest tasks early in the day, it isn’t ideal if you’re not at your best until later in the afternoon. Every professional has a unique rhythm that determines when their most focused and productive.
By knowing your rhythm, you can schedule challenging work during periods where you typically thrive. That also allows you to shift easier tasks to times where you’re languishing a bit, giving yourself a break when your energy levels are naturally lower.
Create Work Batches
If you want to increase efficiency, batching tasks that require similar skills together is beneficial. It allows you to adopt one mindset and maintain it through a significant part of your work. The approach lets you develop a functional rhythm, making you more efficient overall.
Once you complete a work batch, proceed to another that has some similarities to what you were working on previously. That can make the transition easier to make, boosting productivity.
Silence Your Notifications
Alerts chiming, pop-ups appearing on screens, and similar notifications are highly distracting. Even if you choose not to open it, the notification pulls your attention away from the task at hand for at least a moment. Then, you have to take a second to refocus before you can begin working again. Overall, it makes you less efficient.
If you want to boost productivity, silence as many notifications as possible. Make sure all email and social media alerts and pop-ups are disabled on your phone and computer. If possible, silence your phone ringer, too, or use a customized do not disturb setting to ensure that only critical calls will ring while the setting is turned on. Then, you can focus with greater ease.
Contact Selectek Today!
Ultimately, each of the strategies above can help you work smarter, not harder. If you’d like to find out more about how you can improve your productivity and efficiency while on the job, the team at Selectek wants to hear from you. Contact us to speak with one of our staff members today.
