Become an Efficiency Guru

Whether, you are a seasoned homeworker, or new to the whole experience, it can be hard remaining focused and efficient when at home. Effective time and task management are crucial to getting things done, creating a positive feel-good factor, delivering motivation and even a few endorphins.

How do you currently organise your tasks and day, what are your priorities?

To be efficient, we need effective organisation, planning and prioritisation, which can be tricky with so many distractions. In this article, we want to give you a few tips to help you beat the distractions and become an efficiency superstar!

Step 1 – Make Yourself a To-Do List

A to-do list helps us to stay organised, which not only helps well being but keeps us mentally focused. This is the foundation for our planning. Write a list of what tasks you need to accomplish for the day. You can make a weekly list, but daily ones are more effective. Write your list down or use online tools to help build a picture of what you need to complete.

Make sure you can see your list as this will help keep you focused. Look to set tasks and times in your calendar or have reminders.

Step 2 - Prioritise and Rank Tasks

As humans, we often look for the path of least resistance and will naturally gravitate to the tasks that are easier to complete. Look to prioritise tasks based on priority! and those that impact your role and company efficiency.

Make sure that priority tasks can be easily identified (bigger fonts, Underlined) just to set some importance. Look to set tasks and times in your calendar or have reminders.

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Step 3 – Understand the Role You Play

Understand how your work will impact others ability to deliver their roles/tasks. Once you understand this, it may alter your prioritisation and help you make clearer decisions on what work needs to be completed and when.

Step 4– Don’t Focus on Unnecessary Tasks

The phone, the kids, stress or worry, the incredible plotline in that daily soap can all call for your attention. With other things on your mind, its easy to get distracted and do a less taxing task. Understand the importance of tasks and those that are less of a priority, move to a more convenient time in your day/plan. Put away any things that may distract you and work through your to-do list.

Step 5 – Don’t Pressure Yourself with Unrealistic Deadlines

If you have been set a deadline to deliver from your management team, don’t set your deadline for the same day. Set a completion date ahead of that deadline. However, please don’t fall into the trap of setting unrealistic expectations, as this just adds stress and can cause the mind to shutdown mentality.

Be kind to yourself and give yourself enough time, otherwise, you’ll deliver poor quality work.

Step 6 - Set Break Times

Give yourself a break and remember to take breaks. No one is demanding that you are perched in front of your computer from the minute you get up, till the evening. Allow yourself breaks and or even a quick nap. Get up and exercise, switch on a mindfulness app and do breathing exercises. There is a school of thought that for every hour you work you need to rest for 10 minutes.

You are allowed breaks, and this helps to keep you focused.

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Step 7 – Don’t Get Distracted

The list of potential distractions at home is probably way too long for this article. Our phones, gadgets and social media can be huge distractions for some.

Don’t be checking Facebook or your email inbox every few minutes as you will never get anything finished. Set times to do some of these, check new work emails every 2 hours, only look at Facebook on breaks. Just a few simple tricks can help with clarity and focus.

Being well organised and planning our workload and days will help us to be more successful and feel happier. I am sure, we have all experienced stress unrealistic time pressures and meltdowns when things spiral or become overload.

Aside from organising yourself, there are lots of great tools to help you stay organised. There are App-based tools like Trello or Monday. Software led tools such as Microsoft Teams and To-Do which deliver the feature you need to stay on top of things.

However, all of this requires a little upfront effort, time and organisation.

Hope this blog helps and if one of your task is to find someone to help with Marketing please get in touch. Keeps safe.