Focus: Work Faster and More Efficiently
Friday, 10. 30. 2009 – Category: T2 Communications
Focus can be really easy for some, and very difficult for others. It’s Monday: “Okay, lots to do! Time to focus. Where to start? Umm…” There are deadlines to meet and efficiency is always important. Our projects and workload take skill, determination and focus to complete. Hopefully, skill and determination are already in place, but even when they are it is easy to become distracted and overwhelmed. Focusing can be the biggest struggle. E-mails, phone calls, people popping in our office for a quick question, and having a lot to do can bombard us and keep us from getting any real work done. Anything we can do to help ourselves get started or finished easier, quicker, and more efficiently is great for us and our workplace. How do we help ourselves focus? Some solutions are easy; closing our office door and turning off our phones are good places to start. There are other ways of avoiding distraction.
Make a List
When there are many tasks to complete in one day or week, it can become too overwhelming to even get started. Making a list helps prioritize each project, allowing you to identify the immediate deadlines. After you prioritize, you can begin to tackle the projects on your list one at a time, beginning with the most pressing matter. This should be done every morning so that you can put later deadlines off until the next day if you need to; or it should be done every afternoon so you know where to begin immediately the next morning. This can also help you determine whether you have too much on your plate and need to delegate a project or two to somebody else. There is only so much time in one day or week, and you are only one person. If you have too much to realistically complete, you may need to delegate so that you can focus and perform more efficiently.
Set Time Limits
Some would say that the trick is to complete the easiest and quickest tasks first. This is a good idea as long as time allows and deadlines can still be met. If this is the route you choose to get a few things crossed off the list and narrow your focus, then set a timer for each small task. If you know that your contribution should be a fifteen minute job then set an alarm for fifteen minutes and go! This way you will not get too caught up in parts of the project that you either are not responsible for or do not have the time to change or think about right then. Setting a separate alarm or timer instead of just watching the time helps you keep your eye on your work and not on the clock. Focus is the key, not just getting things done.
Turn Your E-mail Off
Our professional society is full of e-mail junkies. Especially when sitting in front of our computers all day, we cannot help ourselves from opening messages the minute we receive them to see what the “latest and greatest” may be. Most of us have our email accounts on and up for the entire day. Even though we minimize them to open another program, we still get notifications with pop-up bubbles and sound cues. The constant flow of information and requests can be distracting when we really need to focus. Instead of just minimizing your e-mail program, close it completely. This will stop the constant “ding” whenever you get a new message. For those of us who have all sound on mute, it will eliminate the constant bubble in the lower corner of our screens from taking our focus off from the current project at hand.
Finding focus can be a process of elimination. Find what works best for you by trial and error.
Katie Petre works for T² Communications, a CornerWorld [OTCBB: CWRL] company.
Tags: e-mail, focus, Katie Petre, priorities