Do you ever wish you could survive without it and didn’t need to sleep? If you’re like us, most likely at times you may have found there are not enough hours in the day! This couldn’t be more true in the workplace with endless email threads and streams, slowing down your progress.
The endless todo list and completion of tasks can cause your motivation to decrease and ultimately ruin your productivity steadily.
What if we told you there is one solution that can solve all of this?
Yes, that’s right; the solution is simple; all you need to do is to prioritise. This way, you can meet your deadline and stay on top of your tasks. You’ll be glad to know; there’s more than one approach to prioritising your workload.
To help you maximise your productivity, we’ve come up with 5 top techniques to help you.
7 techniques to prioritise your workload
Keep all of your tasks in one place!
Sometimes, when we live an on the go lifestyle, we can have a habit of noting down tasks on our phones, computers or writing them down on paper.
These tasks can come in a range of different forms and can be hard to keep on top of if they’re all in other places. Therefore, what we recommend is to stick to one method such as a pen and paper, or use a mobile/web designed app for typing up your tasks.
Organise your list based on deadlines and urgency
Once you have your to do list curated in one place, you should filter them by the ones that are the most important and that are due soon. To identify the critical tasks, they can be ones that you’ve decided to leave until the last minute or the unexpected ones.
In the workplace, examples could be answering email or responding to a client. Moreover, the non-important tasks are ones that aren’t essential towards your business goals. Usually, these tasks can be delegated to someone else.
By any chance, if you witness an influx of urgent tasks, it may be a sign to reevaluate your business process.
Assign your tasks into time bound categories
When you have tasks, it’s great to assign them categories, which will help you on the road to completion. Generally, we recommend these four categories:
Act: Act on these tasks and complete as soon as possible.
Postpone: Review when is the right time to complete and schedule a day for them
Delegate: Give these tasks to someone else in your organisation to complete
Delete: Discard these tasks from your schedule
Write a to do list everyday
One great way of accomplishing your workload is by writing out your tasks for the day in the morning. This way, as soon as you complete a task, you can scratch it off, allowing you to feel less stressed and more accomplished.
Incorporate the 2 minute rule
In essence, if you have any task on your to do list that can be completed within 2 minutes, then do it instantly. The mastermind behind this technique, according to CNBC was David Allen, who indicates this rule can help stop you from procrastinating.
Likewise, if you find it takes longer than 2 minutes, then at least you’ve made some progress. Examples of this could be replying to an email or ringing an important client.
Keep the important work for your productive times
What is your bodies chronotype, are you a morning lark or a night owl? Depending on the time of day you choose to work, we recommend doing the most difficult tasks when you have the most brainpower. If you’re a morning person, then best keep your difficult assignments to the morning. If you don’t, you may find yourself becoming susceptible to what Forbes call the ‘afternoon crash’.
When this happens, this can cause your mind to wander away from tasks, taking them longer to complete. Similarly, you can become victim to decision fatigue, making you tired quickly from making simple decisions, which you usually could do at a fast pace.
Implement downtime into your schedule
Equally as important as your to do list is your leisure time. Depending on what you like to do, add in time to your calendar to do something you love. If you don’t provide yourself with time to rest, you could become a victim of dehydration, sleep deprivation, exhaustion and many more.
To implement downtime in your schedule Abjournal recommends you can incorporate the following journaling, writing, mindful eating, exercise, socialising with friends, meditating and much more.
Whatever you choose to implement, it allows you to feel rejuvenated and full of energy to take on your tasks. Most importantly, American Scientific suggests downtime can help better the stores of your brain, increasing its attention, motivation and increases your chances of productivity and creativity.
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