The Ten Fastest Ways to Improve Your Daily Results
If finding ways to be more efficient and productive is one of your New Year’s resolutions, here are ten strategies that will definitely improve your daily and weekly results:
Some people do their best work early in the morning, and others aren't fully productive until the afternoon or evening. Identify Your Most Productive Hours Use Your Energy Cycles to Your Advantage.
Pick the two most important tasks on your list each day and commit to completing just those two tasks today. (Build your day around those two activities.)
Keep track of your time for a week. How can you become more efficient and productive if you don't know where to start? (Download our free Timekeeping Journal)
Slow down and try to do more tasks just once. It's not about how many tasks you start in a day, it's about how many you complete! This will reduce the size of your daily list.
Focus on one thing at a time. With greater focus and concentration tasks will take less time, you'll make fewer mistakes, and get more accomplished each day.
Break your day into hourly intervals. We’re far more effective when we focus on what we can accomplish one to an hour rather than “by the end of the day.”
The second fastest way to improve productivity is to batch like activities on your Master List. Batch responding to emails, returning phone calls, and similar tasks.
Reduce the Amount of Time in Email Each Day. · Don’t leave your email open all-day long. Rather, set-up a short block of time each hour (say ten minutes) to check, prioritize, and respond to emails. When you check your email, you're in control. When email goes "ding" it's in control and chances are you'll respond to it immediately.
Before you end your day, reflect on ways to improve tomorrow. Reflect on what you did well that day and how you could improve your results tomorrow. Consistent productivity improvement is more quickly achieved through daily reflection.
Get off to a faster start each week. That means, close out Friday better, reflect on your week, then plan for next week. Create mental seperation so you can enjoy the weekend!
Start by downloading our timekeeping journal. Understanding where you're spending your time will show you opportunities for improvement. Typically the difference between your daily plan and what actually happened that day is an "eye-opener."