Work Smarter Prioritize Time
You’re exhausted. Time always seems to be fleeting and your goals – good health, business, and family – seem to be further away than ever.
Work smarter, not harder by eliminating – even hacking – the inessentials so you can focus on what matters: your goals. This is not a cut corner to skimp on quality strategy. It’s about increasing your value by working efficiently and effectively.
Time Savers that Reduce Stress
Prioritize – Family, team members, friends – sometimes it seems like you’re performing dozens of tasks that sap up hours of your time for everyone, but you! You can reevaluate what you are doing with your day and prioritize it.
You will find that many of those tasks bring little value to the table, driving you further away from your goals. Prioritization is king in time management. Determine the order to deal with tasks according to their relative importance and value.
Ask yourself, “Does it give value?” If it isn’t delivering any value, completely eliminate it to free time up for things that do.
Delegate – Perhaps you’re too willing to help others or you’re a firm believer in the philosophy, “If you want things done, you’ve got to do them yourself.” Let go – give up control. Not everything needs your attention and you need to know your limits. Delegate the task to someone else by evaluating whether the person does indeed need your help or if you have the necessary skills and resources to do it in an efficient manner.
Handle Things Once – Do you get buried in an email every day, then get tangled up in creating an intricate system to manage it. Then KISS it! Keep It Simple Stupid. Organize a simple system to manage workflow so when you perform a task, such as reviewing your email, set a time frame, and hold yourself to it.
Be decisive, move on after making a decision, and to make it absolutely work – don’t look back.
Trust your decisions – you’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Just Say No – Keep an open-door policy for your team to ask questions, give feedback, or a time to inform you about anything that you need to know. Get smart: Shut the door, designate “visiting hours,” and learn how to say “no” constructively.
No need to be aggressive about it. Respect yourself and the other person by showing them how non-priority interruptions affect the value you create.
Accept Imperfection – It’s easy to get so caught up in everything that you end up taking more time than was needed. Consider the 80:20 rule that states 80% of your measurable results come from 20% of the tasks you perform.
Maximize that 20% by setting time limits on medium-priority tasks, minimizing the overall time you take to perform inessential or routine tasks, and take action.
