Do you have the feeling that you do not have enough time to complete all your tasks? An efficient organization of the working day in order take full advantage of the hours we dedicated to work is key so that we do not have to continue working at home. Knowing how to adapt ourselves to the available time at work is fundamental to improve the efficiency of work, both individual and in the team, and to make a better distribution of tasks and resources. In addition, with a better organization, last-minute pressures caused by deadlines can be avoided.
Keys to organize the working day correctly
- Plan tasks by the hour, including meetings, document preparation, or answering pending emails.
- List them, prioritizing those that are really urgent. Take your time, because if you classify too many tasks priority in a short period of time, stress will probably limit your ability to work.
Learn to say “no”. This is one of the most complicated points to attain however, as far as possible, try to be realistic and do not commit to those goals or tasks that you are not able to accomplish in the requested deadline.
- Organize your place of work so you do not waste unnecessary time in finding the documentation in the middle of a multitude of papers.
- Avoid distracting yourself, do not lose your concentration by trying to do three tasks at the same time. Attending your peers’ conversations, while reading a report and responding to messages, is wasting your time and increasing your stress.
- Take advantage of the energy in the morning to solve the most work. Even if there are days when you feel sleepy, the early hours of the morning is the moment when the body and mind are the most rested and with the most of energy to tackle the tasks.
- Establish planning as a daily routine. Start every day with a few minutes to list and prioritize the tasks that you have to finish and the time you are going to dedicate to them. In this way, you will be able to organize your workday in an efficient and productive way.
Methods to increase productivity at work
Once we have managed to apply the keys to organize the work day, and we have improved our weak points, we can try to improve our productivity at work by putting into practice some of the most commonly used task organization methods around the world.
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GDT Method (Getting Things Done)
The GDT method aims at getting your mind free from the pending tasks by storing them in different folders, so that we can concentrate on the really important task. This innovative method does not seek a direct time management, but is based on deciding in what actions we are going to pay our attention in what actions we are going to devote our time right now.
First, the tasks are stored and organized in folders. A place where you can create them can be the email. These folders should be classified according to a scheme similar to the following one: urgent, projects (tasks that require more than one action and must be reviewed periodically), delegated / on hold (tasks that you have delegated to another person or that have to be answered), Someday (you would like to do them but you cannot do them right now). According to this order, attention must be focused on what we are going to do. Once finished, file it or discard it.
The basic rules are:
- If a task takes less than 2 minutes, do it.
- You can not return any task to its folder.
- Periodically review the contents of the folders.
This method provides perspective and control of time and tasks.
Pomodoro Method
The pomodoro method is based on organizing our workday in 25-minute intervals (called “pomodoros”) with short pauses between them. During work time, all kind of distractions must be avoided, you can only change of activity or task during rest time. Every four “pomodoros”, you should take a longer break.
The keys to organizing your working day with the pomodoro method are:
- Plan your workday according to the pomodoros, reducing wasted time to the maximum.
- Do not allow any distractions during the 25 minutes of the concentration period.
- Get up from the chair at each break.
Thanks to frequent breaks, concentration and productivity are improved, which leads to an increase in leisure time. The concentration of the tasks in the work periods supposes a smaller number of interruptions, which results in the accomplishment of the tasks within the working day.
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