1. Plan your days the evening before.
Taking 15-minutes every evening to plan out your next day allows you to begin each morning with a clearly defined purpose. When you have a plan already mapped out you can attack each task and immediately move to the next one when completed. There is no time wasted trying to decide what to do next.
2. Take full advantage of your mornings.
The morning sets your pace for the entire day and it is also provides you with a block of time that will be completely free of distractions — no phone calls and no emails — it is 100 percent “you” time.
3. Learn to delegate properly.
You can’t do everything — I know, I didn’t believe it at first either. I thought I could stack task on top of task and eventually get them all done. I was so wrong. If you keep doing that, everything will come crashing down and you will lose precious time getting caught up.
4. Treat your desk like a surgeon’s table.
Surgeons’ tables are spotless and everything is organized and laid out perfectly — providing the doctors with a work environment that allows them to do their jobs efficiently without having to search for anything. Keeping your desk neat, clean and organized eliminates wasted time trying to find anything. A few minutes here and a few minutes there every day quickly add up to unnecessary wasted time.
5. Create an email-checking schedule.
There are two email-checking habits that will kill your productivity — constantly refreshing and ignoring email altogether. Constantly refreshing your email every hour is a major time-suck if you are going to stop what you are doing to reply to emails every time your refresh reveals new emails. If you ignore your email it leads to a backed up inbox that will end up taking much longer to clear out — not to mention the mess delayed communication can cause. Create an email schedule and try your best to stick with it. I like to tackle my email four times a day, spending 15 to 20 minutes on the task each time.
6. Schedule personal time — and don’t cheat yourself out of it.
Working nonstop leads to stress and fatigue — this can ruin your focus and completely kill your productivity. You have to step away to recharge and essentially take time off in order to get more done.
| Taken from Get Organized With These 6 Tips That Lead to More Productive Days on Entrepreneur.com. |