This is a guest post by Swati Srivastava, an avid writer who loves to pen down her ideas and professional tips for job search, finding your career goal, and increasing productivity at work.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
Doing what you love makes the workday easier.
However, even if you love your job, no day is same and it’s not always easy to enjoy your work. After all, work is all about, well, work!
So, how can you keep the flame burning to go to the work every day with the same enthusiasm? How can you have more time for other activities, avoid burnout and finish your work quickly?
Here are 10 Tips to Make Your Work Day Easier:
- Focus on high reward tasks. Doing things that take up maximum time but give no rewards should be avoided. Focus on your top tasks. Avoid unproductive things such as gossip, and office politics. Do not allow your colleagues to interrupt you unnecessarily.
- Don’t over plan. Planning your work is imperative to a smooth work flow. However, too much planning before doing anything makes less time to get things done. Moreover, avoid plans to do too many things in one time frame, such as back-to-back meetings. This is the best way to cut short your ‘to-do’ list for the day and make your day less stressful.
- Learn to manage Email. Email is one thing that takes the maximum time of an employee. Hence, if you know how to manage your emails, half of your work is done. You can make your work easier by limiting the size of each response, yet conveying the complete message.
- Learn shortcuts. Setting up auto-text on your mobile allows you to respond to office messages on the go. You do not need to type the entire thing every time while responding to messages.
- Say “no” when necessary. In addition to removing a few things from your ‘to-do’ list, saying “no” also becomes vital in the work place. Saying “no” conveys that you are capable enough to distinguish between work priorities, productive and unproductive work.
- Question what is not clear. Question the things that you think are not required. For instance, most of the office meetings are considered a waste of time. Ask if the meeting is actually required, if there is there to much time allotted for it, what the agenda is, etc.
- Keep communication open. The way you interact or communicate with people at different work levels also defines how smoothly you can manage your work. Hence, maintain professionalism, yet build personal rapport with colleagues. Keep all your communications clear to avoid any misunderstandings.
- Delegate work. Have a long list of tasks? Make it easier by delegating. It is worth delegating the work to a new intern, your direct report, or a virtual assistant. This way you can focus more on important things, and have other employees learn new tasks. Delegate smartly, choosing the right person for each task.
- Don’t stress. You cannot maintain the same level of energy every day and for every task. Hence, do not put pressure on yourself to fight for perfection. Yes, keeping focus on making things right is important, however fighting for perfectionism is like making your work life harder.
- Get organized. The key to make your work easier is organizing everything- from your desktop to Email inbox, and from interactions with colleagues to meetings!
An Easier Work Day
Believe it; making your work easier is actually in your hands. Implement these 10 easy tips, and experience a better work day.
Question: What tips have you found that make your work day better? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Hi Swati great list. Learning to say no and too focus on where I can be be the most productive have been life changers fro me.
Hey Jon. It feels great to know that you liked my post and the ideas shared by me have actually helped you in your life. Cheers..
Nice post. Learning to say no is hard. One thing that helps me make my days easier is to not set out to accomplish too many tasks in one day on my daily to do list. I have found that when I do this, I get stressed when the inevitable unplanned necessary tasks arise. I now devote more time for unplanned items each day which causes me to be more selective on the tasks I do choose to do and I do a better job on the unplanned tasks because I don’t feel like I have to rush through them. – Shane from conquerwork.com
Thank You Shane for liking the post. I agree that saying No is actually difficult at workplace. That’s why learning this art is vital to make your workday much easier. It is important to distinguish between productive and unproductive work.
Learning to say no and focusing on the ROI of work activities are the top two(IMO) out of your article. Since I started trimming the fat from my daily activities I have found I’m learning more, faster, better, and enjoying life times infinity!
I choose not to visit Twitter as much anymore because I’ve noticed It has a low personal ROI. I’d be better off spending my time reading books, compiling books from Wikipedia articles, connecting with other bloggers(like I’m doing right now,) and all the other fancy-dancy things.
Is Twitter still a large part of my social networking? Yes – Infact it’s the largest(though Reddit is catching up.) Focusing on the things that bring both the most ROI and joy into your life is the key to eternal happiness.
Hi Shawn. Thanks for liking the post.
This is a great list of fundamentals that will give you the time to stay focused on the things that really matter and create a relationship with your job where you truly love what you do everyday. In my opinion, email and the endless, back-to-back meetings with no real purpose are two of the biggest factors that prevent us from focusing on our “big rocks” each day. Email is completely overused and is often the most ineffective communication tool. I have found that keeping email closed and out of view for a few hours each day is the best way to avoid the constant distractions that it creates. To avoid an over-booked schedule that doesn’t allow me any time to focus on my top priorities, I also schedule time on my calendar with myself to work on my projects and initiatives. It’s amazing how the day can quickly fill up with pointless meetings that do not result in any any groundbreaking actions, decisions or meaningful outcomes. My last appointment of the day is always with myself and it always involves reviewing my accomplishments of the day, list of “to do’s” for the next day and my plan to achieve my goals for the remainder of the week.
Hey Andrea. Hope you are doing good.
Thanks for liking my post. Like you, I also strongly believe that pointless meetings actually reduce productivity at work. For a smart employee, finding out the smart ways to save time is really important. At the end, your focus should be on ROI of work activities.
A tool that I personally use for shortcuts is a voice texting.Voice to text messaging has gotten a lot better and will continue to develop as search engines include some type of voice recognition feature in their offering.
Hi David. I totally agree that voice texting is another option to save time at work. Thanks for sharing this.
That is one of the best job guide on the internet, thanks for sharing your awesome tips with us.
I will try these.
Hey, thanks for a great article. I hate my job so much and am exploring the online affiliate marketing area, so I get to work from home and spend more time with my kids. The issue I have is there seems to be so much conflicting advice about what to do and how to do it, everyone I reach out to wants to sell me a course! I was wondering if you have an opinion about how easy it is for me to leave work and become self-sufficient? In this article they make working from home sound so easy https://desktopassistance.com/work-from-home-jobs/ but I’m just wondering if it’s realistic for normal people like me. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks
Very good advices, straight to the point for the worker. The list is turning out very usefull for me, but for someone with experience this can be old news. Good stuff anyway, keep up the good work, bye.
Very good advices, straight to the point for the worker. The list is turning out very usefull for me, but for someone with experience this can be old news. Good stuff anyway, keep up the good work, bye.
That is one of the most incredible work guide on the web, a debt of gratitude is in order for offering your amazing tips to us.
I will attempt these.