Effective techniques for working smarter when time and resources are limited
Learn to diagnose your own productivity challenges and walk away with tools for improving your time awareness, prioritization, organization, and focus. The advice below will increase your productivity and enhance your work experience, GUARANTEED or your money back! This post is part of a series that will offer you multiple techniques to improve your productivity by controlling distractions.
Studies show that that the most common productivity challenges fall into 4 categories:
Time awareness
Prioritization
Organization
Focus
Understanding these categories will allow you to quickly diagnose and resolve issues you may have. Working smarter will make your life easier, and become an even better team player.
Let’s look at each one more closely and rate where your skills are now.!
Challenge 1: Time awareness
Time awareness is about knowing where time is going, how much time something will take, and how to communicate time to others.
When this is lacking it leads to:
chronic lateness
missed deadlines
meetings starting late or running too long.
How would you rate your time awareness?
Challenge 2: Prioritization
Prioritization means identifying the most important thing in a sea of important things.
When this skill is lacking it leads to:
being too busy
over-perfecting work
spending time on work that should be delegated to others.
How would you rate your prioritization skills?
Challenge 3: Organization
Being organized means having an efficient system for getting things done.
When this skill is lacking it leads to things like:
missed commitments
worrying about things slipping through the cracks
searching for notes or to-do items.
How would you rate your organization skills?
Challenge 4: Focus
When you have focus you stay on-task without interruptions.
When this skill is lacking it leads to:
frequent context switching
getting distracted
rarely feeling a sense of flow.
How would you rate your focus skills?
Call To Action
Your mission today is to dig deeper into your productivity challenges.
Take 2 minutes now to diagnose your own productivity skills. Which of the 4 areas we looked at is your biggest productivity challenge?
Once you have identified it, you can dig deeper into how to handle it and start working smarter!
Next: Time Awareness
