At OfficeTime, we focus a lot on helping our customers become more productive by tracking and analyzing their time. We came across this article in Entrepreneur with 50 great productivity tips. To respect your time, we thought we’d share 10, but please feel free to follow the link to read the rest when you have time.
1. Prioritize and only do what matters. Avoid busy work and going in all directions. Say no to stuff that won’t move the needle.
2. When everything is important, nothing is important. Establish a language of P1, P2, P3 — levels of priorities. You only do some P1s in practice. Relentlessly prioritize.
3. Refuse to accept vague goals. Distill to clarity, then execute.
4. Never add new tasks in front of the queue, add them to the bottom. Complete what you are doing first.
5. Create and manage your schedule in a calendar. Use time blocks for different types of calls, meetings, heads-down work and even email, family time and workouts.
6. If it’s not on the calendar, don’t do it. Don’t assume that you will be working on something unless it is on your calendar.
7. Tweak how much time you spend on what. Find the combination that works for you.
8. Review each week ahead of time on Sunday so that you are prepared.
9. Don’t use chat clients or text messaging — they are a big productivity killer because they disrupt your flow. Be respectful of your own time and team’s time overall.
10. Cut down on unplanned team meetings. It’s OK to pull people into the conference room to brainstorm, but just make it clear this is what you are doing. Don’t turn these sessions into long meetings.
