Do you spend the day running around, busy with a thousand and one things and feeling that you haven't done anything productive, that you should have finished more things, that the day doesn't have enough hours?
If this is your case and you want to better manage your time and be more productive, in this article I explain how to do it. You have to consider two things: be more efficient, and be more effective.
How to be more efficient
To be more efficient it is important to determine when you are most productive and what is wasting your time. To find out these two things it is very useful to write down for a week (at least 3 or 4 days) everything you do and the time you spend on each thing.
During a normal day we all have peaks of productivity. For example, in my case I have identified three different schedules: in the mornings from 11 to 2 they are very productive, time flies and I finish things faster than at any other time of the day. Then there are times of normal-good productivity, and times when I have a hard time concentrating and waste time with anything.
Knowing this, writing articles in moments of low concentration would be a huge waste of time, since it would take much longer than if I do it in the moments where I am more productive. You can do something similar, use your time wisely. Do the important work that requires more concentration and attention in your productive moments, and leave the rest of tasks for moments of less concentration. That will increase your productivity and make you feel more satisfied to see that you do and finish more things (the trick is to finish not to start and leave halfway).
You also have to know how you waste time, activities or tasks that are supposed to take five minutes and without realizing it you have lost half a morning. That normally includes social networks (Facebook, Twitter), going “five minutes” for coffee, checking the email for a moment. Find out how much time you spend per day on these activities, the results will surprise you.
Now you know when you are more productive and what "thieves" of your time you should eliminate or limit, here are two other suggestions to make better use of time:
Group tasks: Instead of checking your email every 15 minutes, aim to do it 3 times a day. If you have to go out several days for something, spend a single day doing it all.
Schedule uninterrupted periods of time (without telephone, internet,…). This works great, I recommend you give it a try. If it seems difficult, start with short periods of 10-15 minutes and increase them. You will be able to finish many more things. It is one of the techniques that I use the most because it works very well.
How to be more effective
The second part is to be more effective, to focus on the important things, the ones that will give you better results. In short, in knowing how to prioritize. Here are three methods that I really like:
1. The four quadrants (technique described in the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey), consists of grouping your tasks in one of these quadrants:
important and urgent
important and not urgent
not important and urgent
not important and not urgent.
Of course, first you focus on the first quadrant, the important and urgent tasks. But the most effective is to take care of the second quadrant as soon as possible, so that important tasks do not become urgent.
2. Pareto Law. 80% of your results come from 20% of your work. Identify that 20% and do it first. One way to do this is to divide the number of tasks you have by five and from the resulting number select the most important ones. For example, if you have a list of 20 tasks, using this system, only 4 would be really important, decide what they are and take care of them first.
3. Answer these questions. When you are overwhelmed and have many things to do, answer these two questions: What is the most important thing I have to do today? And if you only had to do one thing, what would it be? (I use it a lot).
The most important
Now you know how to be more efficient and more effective and it will show in your work, but there is a third part, the most important one: "want". Like everything in this life, being more productive depends on whether you want to keep going despite the obstacles and unforeseen that arise. So tell me, do you need to be more efficient, more effective, or both? Are you willing to do whatever it takes?
