Work More Effective Than Hard One – An Art of Work Smart

Nine (09) Best Ways to Be More Effective and Smart at Workplace

Habit is the creator of your personality and brain. When you establish routines, you can carry out jobs faster, now you do not have to sequencing it every time in your thought process.

Regardless of your work or industry, you do not have enough time to conclude your daily routine tasks. Resultantly, you start thinking that you cannot accomplish. You will start curse on yourself which will stamp negative impact on your productivity and health both.

So, what should you do? Work overtime?

No, not at all. As per research published by John Pencavel of Stanford University "the correlation between hours worked and productivity found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours -- so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours."

Instead of working overtime, focus should be on what really matters. Once you realize it, you can overcome it by following these easy tips.

1. Develop Strategic MITs.

A project has been assigned to you. Your thought process will start running behind it like where to start? and what you will need to get it done? how will it be completed on time? etc. this massive and bulky thoughts will create your to-do-list an unhealthy chunk for you.

The problem is this gigantic to-do-list is the result of your consecutive overthinking about it which will inversely affect your productively. You misconceived your personality, and think that you have a multitasking personality, and wasted your time and energy on planning of unimportant tasks.

Keep your to-do-list smart and lean. Divide your whole project in a few tasks. Only focus on 3 to 4 initial, urgent, and important tasks for the project in a day. Pickup one task at a time, complete it before moving on to another one. This approach will increase your productivity and minimize anxiety.

Leo Babauta advised as “at least one Most Important Tasks (MITs) must be your goals related and should focus on it in the AM Whether if it's at home or in the office, tackle your MIT first thing in morning.”

As Leo said that, "If you put them off to later, you will get busy and run out of time to do those MITs. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy!"

2. Should be Result Oriented, Not Time.

We often think that productively is something about how much time a task takes to accomplish; whereas to see what we achieved in a such time.

For instance, you spent five hours writing an article consists of 1000 words. You may be unsatisfied with it even it took a nice chunk of your time. But what if you divided it into five equal parts? formatted it nicely, added headnotes and quotes, made grammatical check and references. You realize that you have achieved a wonderful outcome in that period.

In a research it was revealed that "if importance is given on hours and physical appearance over action and outcomes leads to a culture of inefficiency and apprehension."

The compulsion of your presence at desk till certain time creates a factory-like environment which overlook some basic principles of idea generation and against the human nature: (1) When the brain feels tired, it reduces its productivity, (2) Idea generation occurs on its own terms, (3) When someone forcefully shove to execute something, he begin to hate that work.

Another way to monitor your results instead of time is to create your done list. It will be an ongoing log of your completed tasks in a day. In presence of this log you will feel yourself more motivated and focused as compare to earlier.

Moreover, the done log allows you to review your day long work, gives you a reason to celebrate your accomplishments and assists you to plan more effectively."

3. Should Have Positive Attitude.

It reveals that you can more effectively perform at work with a "positive attitude."

“positive thinking is a mental and emotional attitude that focuses on the bright side of  life and expects positive results”

People having positive attitude take initiatives whenever they can. They feel happy to help their fellows in need, they always ready to assist someone who is sick, and they ensure that their work should be done to a great standard. You will not seem them say that their work is "fair enough. That means they always focus go above and beyond.

A positive attitude will support you to set standards for your work at workplace, enable you to take responsibility of your task done and make decisions easier because these are based upon your intuition. This commendable quality is hard to find in many institutions but exemplify moral decision-making and uprightness could open many doors of your success in future.

4. Should More Communicate.

Irrespective of you are a freelancer, self-employer, or employee, you will have to work with others in so many situations. Communication skill must be strengthened one. Once improved, it will eliminate unnecessary rework load and wasted of time from your daily work routine, will eliminate misunderstandings and miscommunications.

This trait can be improved through an activelistening skill and keep on one topic at a time when communicating. Communicate in short but complete sentences and should be to point. Don't put too much stuff in a single message because it only confuses the others.

5. Should Create an Autopilot Routine and Tasks.

Hallie Crawford a career speaker and author says that "We are creatures of habit,and so are our brains. When we establish routines, we can carry out tasks faster since we don't have to 'think' about the task - or prepare for it - as much and can work on autopilot."

You should use calendar or task log or diary to create daily routine and try to follow the same routine, will shift your routine on autopilot mode thereby you do not have to think about any matter too much and efficiency will increase gradually.

Everyone wants to do more in less time, so minimize the burden of decisions you must make in a day. Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg wore the same outfit for years. It averts fatigue of choose and pick. The implausible secret to have things done is to make them more automatic, so they require less energy.

For example, if you spend energy in search of some chocolate cookies, will have less energy behind to resolve a complex problem. Discipline and automation of tasks reduces unavoidable as the day wears on. By eliminating silly or frivolous tasks out of your daily routine, you can focus all your energy on more important tasks.

6. Should Avoid Multitasking.

It is a common myth that we have multitasking personality. But, in most of the cases humen being are not capable of doing multiple tasks simultaneously. No one can multitask very well and when someone say he can, he is deceiving himself. In fact, the brain is very good at misleading itself.

Whereas, in a simple word, we are quickly shifting our attention from one task to another. This transformation from one task to another, we think we are handling everything around at the same time. But it may not be the case. We cannot focus two or more things simultaneously but only switching between them very quickly.

So, whenever you need to do multitasking, avoid it. Take a in depth breath and pickup most important task that urge to do urgently. Once it has done, shift on other one and so on.

7. Should Take Advantage of Temporization.

It sounds counter productive, but it is a method to the madness about efficiency improvement.

As per Parkinson'sLaw "If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do." In any manners, it does not mean to wait until 11^th hour but to have more time to think about it.

In ThaiNguyen it is in common practice that "great leverage for efficiency: imposing shorter deadlines for a task or scheduling an earlier meeting."

Think about it. You have a task to do for which you have deadline of a month, but you just put it aside for last week of its deadline. Means you’ve a time of three weeks to refine it more.

8. Should Relieve Stress.

Stress is a termite for human being which distracts him physically, emotionally and behaviour wise – it is not wrong if we day hat stress hinders your performance at workplace. As stress increases, working performance decreases concurrently. But good thing is that you can overcome this stress and able to alleviate it.

According to the American Psychological Association, "the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious services, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby."

To plan your daily activities a day before is a best technique to manage or even reduce your stress level. Daily work log is the best approach, can be adopted for stress relieve. This will help you to know next day activities and their priorities as well. Take a deep breath for a few minutes on daily bases is also a good way to minimize stress level.

  

9. Should Do The Work You Enjoy.

You are fortunate enough if you have assigned to do what you like to do in life. Meaning thereby your passion has become your source of earning your livelihood.

But in most of the cases, you are assigned tasks at your workplace which you do not like to do. In either situation, you should choose tasks you like to do most, this will increase your level of optimism and try to find any reason which you like to take the task you least enjoying since you have to do it as compulsion. But if the number of tasks you do not like has been increased day by day, you should think on some alternate because continuously stick with the same routine will reduce to efficiency and performance. Always, focus more on the tasks you are enjoying the most.

For instance, if you are a developer, and your love your profession. Instead of spending your time in development you are just perusing administrative tasks, you will not enjoy this change. So, delegate these tasks to some other competent colleague and spend more time in the development tasks or in search of related new tools and techniques. This will tremendously increase your performance, inspirations, and productivity.

Concluding Notion:

Working smart has fantastic benefits. Better health, 

more cash, good work vs life balance, increased energy, 

better self-esteem not to mention exceptional productivity, 

and satisfaction with work.

Published by: Muhammad Waheed