What will be your response if nature would give you the preference of an extra 2 hours to the original 24 hours? I believed you would jump at it. However, that may not be possible in a foreseeable distance. But how do you get more done in less time with many things contending for your attention? To begin, understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. The differences between an effective person and an efficient person are the former work harder while the latter work smarter. When you work smarter you will get more done in less time. Time is a scarce commodity.
Let me take you these 7 simple tips to getting more done in less time.
- Set your priorities. Everything and all the people around you will contest for your limited time. This is where the quadrant time management comes to play. The followings are principles that will help you separate between important and the necessary matter. And you can choose between the necessary and the urgent issues. It is a lifestyle of doing the first thing first. You get more done in less time when you concentrate your energy on what will add value to you. Because you don’t have the luxury of time, setting priority saves your time, energy, and make you more productive. Similarly, setting your daily priority will guide you to multi-tasking your responsibility. When you multitask, you jump from one assignment to another without making headway. You do a bit of the whole job. And at the end of the day, you will end up with an unsatisfactory job. Therefore, getting more done in less time gives you time to do better things.
- Delegate authority. One of the killers of efficiency is perfectionism. And nothing saps energy and reduces efficiency than thinking you can do it all. To get better results within a limited time implies you focus on the area that you have a comparative advantage. Dividing jobs make each person handle a fraction of the project. That, in turn, makes each individual do less, but have many results on the corporate goal. This also prevents the burn out of the entire team.
- Set a time-bound. Since you do not have the luxury of time, set time for each task you want to handle. A time setting makes you responsible and accountable for meeting the target. Apart from that, it allows you to cut diversion and distraction to the barest minimum. If you fail to time your activity, other things will cluster your day and you have nothing to show for your effort. Setting time-bound for your task also helps you track your progress and check your goal. To be prudent with your time, make each minute of the day counts.
- Set your landmark for your assignment. Batching your work means you put together similar work you can do at the same time. This will help you conserve energy and time. For instance, you can pick a time for receiving and sending emails, making, and returning calls at the same time. Picking a period to attend to your entire social media platform could save you a lot of time. Such principles could also be applied to your household chores. For you to get the best result, apportion a specific time and period in the day of the week for these tasks and you’ll see how much time and energy you have saved. So when you divide your work into stages, you will attend to more important issues on the list.
- Plan your work. To get more done in less time, you have to plan your work and work your plan. Planning will prevent you from drift from your purpose and vision. Without proper planning, your chore becomes optional instead of mandatory. This is what laziness and prostration feed on. With that idea, you can evaluate performance at the close of the day. The best time to plan your daily responsibility is the night before. The day becomes easier as you follow your outline.
- Avoid distraction. If you ask me, distraction is a major killer of dreams and vision. Yet, understanding your distraction is germane to achieving a lot within a limited time. Call this an addiction, and you will not be wrong. Let me run through some of the things that can reduce your output performance. You need to schedule when you open and answer emails, this also goes with the period and duration you spend on social media. Putting off your email alert and your cell phones on silent mode could be a better way of shutting out distractions. Follow after that, is the time of socializing or cracking jokes and having a discussion with a colleague or friends. Sometimes you may have to put a sign on your door that indicates you are busy.
- Be disciplined. Until you hold yourself accountable for time management, you will achieve next to nothing. Get ruthless with your plan, and other things will fall in place. Set your time and priority and key into it. This does not mean you have to be rigid. Try to be firm in your resolve to follow your plans while you allow a degree of flexibility for changes that may come along as you work out your plans.
The current currency of the world is speed. So get yourself on board if you don’t want to be left behind. The bad news is, time is running faster than expected, but the good news is you are behind the wheel. In a simple term, getting more done in less time need a conscious and deliberate decision on your part.
About the author
I am joseph Akinrinola. A pastor, teacher, author, freelance, and incurable learner. I share as I learn insightful ideas that make up a total being physically, spiritually, and emotionally especially, about young people. I blogged at www.thewisdombase.com
