Here’s another tip on managing time and productivity more effectively to reduce and manage stress.
How much of your time is spent working between a variety of tasks or even (heaven forbid!!) multi-tasking?
If so, then you may well be finding that you are busy but not necessarily productive. There is a difference!
Take some time out each day (10 minutes at the beginning and 10 at the end) to plan your work for the day ahead and consider the following tip:
Batch your tasks
Imagine switching on your computer and waiting for it to boot up ready for a task. When it’s ready start a task, then stop after five minutes, set it to sleep and then go and do something else on another computer, repeating the process of switching on. And so on and on. You getting much done?
When we switch from task to task, particularly tasks requiring different thinking processes, it can be similar to the computer example above.
We need to boot up that thought process, complete the task, then boot down.
So, when you have a long list of things to complete; loads of emails to answer, meetings, planning, problem solving: try batching.
Cluster them by task type. Got a few things requiring problem solving a creativity? Clump them together. Emails? Set aside a block of time once or twice a day and buzz through them. Financial tasks? Gather them up and engage your brain on them in one go.
Batching your tasks by type helps to focus your brain function, allowing it to get into a groove and reduces brain ‘boot up’ and ‘close down’ time when switching between widely differing tasks.
Spending that time to plan can be incredibly effective in identifying opportunities to batch your work and thereby save you far more time.
That’s it for today
SG out and batching
Contact me for information about my ‘Time Management PDQ‘ workshops
