It often seems that our professional lives run away from us and end up being vastly out of control. In fact, it would be hard to argue that this wasn’t the norm experienced by the vast majority of professionals in the world today, including employees and employers alike, and spanning all industries.
When you’re working hard — and particularly in the fast-paced and hyper-connected modern business environment that we all find ourselves operating in — tasks just add up, things seem to go wrong, and issues build up at a rapidly accelerated rate.
Things become too chaotic — or, in other words — things become too complex.
And, as the authors of the hit productivity book, The One Thing, point out, your success in business is influenced to a large degree by your ability to focus your energies on core goals, rather than having to put out fires everywhere, all the time.
Bearing that in mind, here are some tips for simplifying your professional life.
Use scheduler services to organise meetings without fuss
Organising meetings, booking rooms, and ensuring that important discussions are had at the right time, and at the right place, with the right people — in a way that creates the right impression — is a major element of virtually all forms of business today.
The thing is, the process of organising all of this can quickly become chaotic, wildly complex, and may take a lot more time and energy out of your day than you would otherwise like to spare.
Room scheduler services exist, in large part, to help take care of this task for you and free up some of that priceless time and energy for you to spend elsewhere.
Timeblock your day as much as possible for essential tasks, and say “no” wherever possible
Whenever a survey is done of the success secrets of influential figures in business, a recurring theme emerges. All of these people are very good at setting aside significant chunks of time during their day to devote to a particular, pressing issue, and they’re all very good at saying “no” to things of lower importance.
In fact, a quote attributed to Warren Buffet states that “the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything”.
Focus on your top priorities for the day, and schedule a substantial block of time for them. To the greatest extent that you’re able to, say “no” to less pressing tasks.
Keep your to-dos organised with the help of a task and project management system
You simply cannot expect to remain on top of things if you don’t have an effective system for gathering today and weighing the importance of your to-dos, as well as managing your projects. Doing it all on the fly is untenable — you’ll constantly be playing catch-up and the chaos will likely overwhelm you.
David Allen has created the “Getting Things Done” method, which is famously used by high-ranking business professionals all around the world.
Adopt that, or an equally effective task management system, to really get a handle on things.
Leave a Reply