![]() He recommends you “make a shallow on-ramp.” Beene knows the key creating this on ramp: “I try to break own my projects into chunks, so I am not overwhelmed by them.” We don’t have problems finishing projects, we have problems starting them,” says Mann. “How many keystrokes does it take? Can you reduce it to three? You might save 10 seconds, but over time, that builds up.” “On any given day, an information worker will do a dozen Google searchers,” says Trapani. If you’re on a computer all day, keystrokes matter because efficiency matters. Then you need to manage your schedule to keep your best time free for your most important work. You can discover yours by monitoring your productivity over a period of time. But, he says, “I try to schedule things so that I work in the morning, when I am the most productive.” Each person has a best time. Industrial designer Jeff Beene does consulting work, so he can do it any time of day. Instead of having random notes about places you want to check out, places you want to keep as a reference, etc., you can save them all in one place, and you can search and share your list easily. Use book marking services like to keep track of web sites. Just because someone can contact you immediately does not mean that you have to respond to them immediately,” says Dan Markovitz, president of the productivity consulting firm TimeBack Management, “People want a predictable response, not an immediate response.” So as long as people know how long to expect an answer to take, and they know how to reach you in an emergency, you can answer most types of email just a few times a day. ![]() “It’s not effective to read and answer every email as it arrives. She points out that this dash works best if you organize the night before so when you sit down to work you already know what your most important task of the day is. This is a great idea because even if you can’t get the whole thing done in an hour, you’ll be much more likely to go back to it once you’ve gotten it started. When she sits down to work in the morning, before she checks any email, she spends an hour on the most important thing on her to-do list. Trapani calls this “running a morning dash”. Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users suggests practicing mindfulness as a way to break the multitasking habit. “A 20-year-old is less likely to feel overwhelmed by demands to multitask, but young people still have a loss of productivity from multitasking,” says Trapani. But it decreases everyone’s productivity, no matter who they are. Take action on an email as soon as you read it.įor people who didn’t grow up watching TV, typing out instant messages and doing homework all at the same time, multitasking is deadly. You don’t see young people scrolling up and down their email pretending to work,” says Mann. “One thing young people are really good at is only touching things once. If it’s a meeting, move it to your calendar. If the message needs more thought, move it to your to-do list. “The ability to quickly process and synthesize information and turn it into actions is one of the most emergent skills of the professional world today,” says Mann. Don’t leave email sitting in your in box. So here are 10 tips to make you better at managing your work:ġ. “Careers are made or broken by the soft skills that make you able to hand a very large workload,” says Merlin Mann, editor of the productivity blog 43 Folders. ![]() In today’s workplace, you can differentiate yourself by your ability to handle information and manage your time. One of the most popular blogs in the world is Lifehacker, edited by productivity guru Gina Trapani, and her forthcoming book by the same name is a bestseller on Amazon based so far on pre-orders. Younger workers understand this, and time management is becoming a topic of hipsters. ![]() But we get better and better at knowing how to optimize as we get better technology to help monitor time allocation. How we use our limited focus and energy has always been a huge workplace issue. And it doesn’t matter how skilled you are if procrastination keeps you from getting your work done. ![]() It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t organize information well enough to take it in. Time management is one of those skills no one teaches you in school but you have to learn. ![]()
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