Tips and ideas to work more efficiently

Set specific goals

Many people don’t really understand goals. ‘I will be more productive today’ is not a goal but ‘I will make five sales today’ or ‘I will spend more time with my kids’ are goals. Start making both short-term and long-term goals which are clear and concise.

Write down your goals and take a look at them once or twice every day. It can serve as a reminder of what is essential and help you to not stray from the path. It also helps as very few people will remember everything they need to do in order to get to their goals.

Do what needs to be done now, well… now

It’s one thing to set goals and it’s another to complete them and you can not complete anything if you don’t start to do them, now.

Plus, you have to do what’s most important at this time for your goals. As an example, if you want to add a new product to your companies line, you will generally do some form of research to see what the market is like for your new product. You don’t jump right into production.

You wanna be great, then be great

What we mean here is not necessarily the old adage of “Fake It Til You Make It” as that can be seen through pretty quickly.

We’re talking about, offering up your help to those in need of it. Don’t be selfish and in the long term, this will come back to you and you may be able to use some of your good Karma to make your life easier.

Be flexible

Rigidity is never a winning ploy. Just ask any tree that snapped during a windstorm.

Instead of blocking everything down to the minute, time out meetings and calls (if necessary) and then list everything else based on priorities.

A basic practice is to list everything as A, B, C and A being the absolute get it done, B being it really needs to get done and C being whenever you get too it, but it does need to be done.

Then the first thing you do is the As (of which there should be no more than 3), then move onto the Bs and so on. As should be done when you have them listed (if it is a multi day A, it can carry over, but that is the only case). Bs are next and can carry over to other days and if you get to Cs, great.

Cs can become Bs as Bs can become As. You can make up your own system as long as it is not tedious and inefficient.

Learn to say no

Saying yes to even a few requests that are not relevant to your goals is one of the biggest efficiency killers.

You need to say no more often and some say, most of the time.

Check emails at a specific time

Stop checking emails throughout the day. Set a specific time, whatever works for you and then stick to it. I do mine before I go to lunch. I respond to all the important ones immediately and the rest wait until the end of the day.

Do not stress over larger tasks

Break them down to smaller tasks and even spread them over days, weeks or months for really large tasks.

As an example, you want to start a YouTube channel. There are a lot of steps involved from creating the channel creating content, writing scripts, shooting, editing and uploading, to promoting it, creating snippets to share, posting, tracking, and so on.

Break this down into:

• Creation
• Promotion
• Marketing

And then break them down into smaller pieces to help alleviate the stress of a big project.

Your body needs breaks

Take a short break every 55 minutes. Studies have shown that this is very helpful for your ability to concentrate. Another fairly well known option is the Pomodoro Technique whereas you work for 25 minutes and take a very short 3-5 minute break for three rounds and then on the 4th 25 minute round you take a 15 – 30 minute break. Then start it all again.

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So, what what are some of your tips? Let us know in the comments. Also, feel free to let us know of any tips we missed.

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