As a productivity junkie, I’m always looking for new ways to improve efficiency.
Here are some tips!
1) Prioritise
We can’t do everything in one day.
As someone who values efficiency, I used to like to schedule (way) too many things in my calendar/to-do list.
I’d then get upset with myself afterwards because I hadn’t managed to do it all.
Sound familiar?
However upon further reflection and review of my to-do lists, and the many times I’ve not managed to cross out all my tasks, I realised that:
a) I’ve been too ambitious in trying to do too many things in a day.
b) It ends up being counter-productive as I will have to bring over the undone tasks to the next few days.
Cue the Eisenhower decision matrix!
Is it urgent AND important?
Do it now!
Is it important but not that urgent?
Schedule it for another time.
If it’s urgent, and not important, delegate.
If it’s not urgent, and not important, delete it.
2) Use a physical desktop calendar – at your work-from-home/work-from-office set-up.
Yes, on top of your mobile apps!
I’ve found that using a physical desktop calendar has been helpful in visualising my overall schedule for the week.
Being able to tick off the day’s schedule day by day through the week is helpful in keeping track of
3) If it takes less than 2 minutes to complete, just do it now.
Examples include- Firing off a quick email, sending off a quick text.
I find that if it takes a relatively short time to tick off this task, doing it immediately might be easier than scribbling it down on a to-do list and having to remember to do it later.
Hope you find these tips helpful!
