I don’t know what your situation is, but I’m sure you want to take your productivity to the next level – both in work and in your personal life, and manage workload in the most effective way possible.
There’s always so much to be done and we get stressed, overwhelmed and are on the verge of experiencing burnout.
Don’t worry. All that is manageable. You can take back control of your time, get things done faster and stay sane if you turn to the right techniques and hacks.
Here are some effective strategies and little changes in daily life you can make for better workload management and maximum productivity:
1. Stop trying to do everything perfectly.
If you’re on a mission to get everything done in the best way possible, you’ll probably end up disappointed.
Striving for perfection never ends well. Be it in the workplace or at home, you’ll need to accept that you have limits. So don’t fear failure, don’t prepare too much.
Just start working on the task and know you’re doing your best anyways. If it doesn’t work out, be alright with that and move onto something else.
2. Remove the unimportant tasks from your list.
80/20 your to-do list. Analyze the 20% of the things you do that give you the 80% of the results and let them be your priority.
The rest isn’t important and your time is better spent working on the essentials only.
3. Outsource.
Manage workload by letting other people do some of the work. Let’s face it, not everything requires your role.
You may even hire a virtual assistant and let him do less important, time-wasting daily tasks like managing email, taking care of invoices, gathering data, doing research, reaching out to people in your field, personal errands, etc.
4. Avoid interruptions.
Make sure that when you start working on a super important task, no one will get in the way and nothing will make you lose focus. Because once it happens, it means you’ll distract your mind with something else for some time and then it will take even longer to concentrate on work again.
So define the distractions you face in daily life and do everything possible to avoid them and stay focused on what matters.
5. Rest properly.
Having a good night’s sleep means you’ll have more energy to do productive work throughout the day. Taking breaks after completing each task is also important to help your brain recharge.
Make sure you do something about these to become more effective and handle tasks effectively.
6. Break big things down into smaller tasks.
Often the big picture looks scary. And that’s one of the main reasons why we procrastinate.
Avoid that by making a step-by-step plan on how to get it done. Break each project into manageable actions. This way you’ll also know what to start with first.
7. Keep track of your time.
You should be aware of how you spend your time at any moment. That will help you be ruthless with it, not waste it in unproductive activities and make changes when you see that some things take too long.
8. Use tools.
Find out the right productivity tools to manage projects, track things, communicate with your team, block online distractions, or else.
It’s not easy to manage workload in today’s world of interruptions, temptations and lack of focus and direction, but it’s something you must learn how to do if you’ve decided to improve your performance and results.
So how do you handle too much workload?
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