How productive your week is depends mostly on what you decide to make of it.
How you plan your activities and maximise the available time determines success, not necessarily how hard you work.
There will always be a better way to complete that task you think is so difficult to achieve.
Find it, work smarter and get more done in your working week. Here are five tips that can help make the best out of your week
- Quit planning, proceed already.
It’s understandable to make plans on tasks to be executed during the week, but often times you proceed to the planning table, you lose value and productive hours. So instead of sit down and keep planning, just do it.
Also, you need to ask yourself “are my meetings really worthwhile?” Most people spend too much time in meetings, when in reality they should be working and getting things done. It’s extremely helpful to craft a time budget. This will help you realize how much time you are losing to meetings or planning.
- Don’t be a ‘yes’ man
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.” — Warren Buffet.
Although it might seem easier saying “yes” to a request than a simple “no”, in the long run it makes it challenging to have a schedule you can really control, especially when you decide to help out with something that brings low or no result. It’s important to be logical about what can be done, the expected time needed, and what will be achieved.
- Leave it for the robots, don’t be a perfectionist.
If you remain so concerned about perfection, it could result in longer time spent on tasks – and most likely lead to less productivity. The reason is when you actively strive for perfection, you spend more time on a single task than required, causing your other responsibilities to get postponed. Perfectionism is even more detrimental when you don’t account to anyone but yourself, as the fine tuning never ends.
- Take notes always, your memory might fail you.
An easy way to ensure you don’t leave any task undone, is to ensure you write every single task. Don’t rely heavily on your memory, it will fail you when you need it most. By jotting down everything that needs to get done in the week, you will have a better representation of what needs to be accomplished and set priorities accordingly.
- Measure your accomplishments for the week
Most of us are guilty of not reviewing work output. Just before you wrap up for the week and prepare for next week, review your successes, along with everything else that needed to be done, to see if you really got work done. Take another look at your to-do list; check off the completed ones, find out the unfinished tasks and why they were not achievable. Celebrate your accomplishments, take note of everything you postponed and learn from your mistakes. You will be better prepared for the next week.
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