Some Tips to Work More Efficiently
One way to avoid stress is to work smarter. What does this mean?
One tool you have is a calendar. It can be a desk calendar, virtual calendar or a day planner. Log all of your due dates for work in the calendar. Virtual calendars give the added benefit of alarms and pop-up reminders to keep you on track. For those who travel, PDAs and planners keep you aware of looming deadlines, meetings and paydays.
Examine your week at a glance. With one or two deadlines, plan the projects you will work on each day accordingly. To avoid boredom, divide your time into blocks. Prepare several briefcases to store the workload that you will take with you at certain days. Timeboxing is a technique that works this way. During each block of time, work on a different task. Keep adding blocks throughout your week until that task is finished. At the end of the day, you’ll find that you completed work on several projects and spent less time evaluating what to do.
Limit the amount of work you take on at any one time. It’s nice to be able to accommodate your clients but let’s be realistic. There are only so many hours in the day and all of them can’t be spent working. You are allowed to have a life.