In the workplace, progress can be defined through the number of tasks done within work hours, rather than the longest hours spent working. This is why the term working hard has been replaced by working smart, as this helps employees accomplish more using less effort and time. Here is a guide on how to work smart in your commercial space for lease.
Avoid Multitasking
There may be times in the office when you will need to work double time to meet some deadlines. While multitasking comes in handy during these moments, it is not advisable to delay your work until the last minute and do them all together moments before the deadline.
Constantly procrastinating and working on multiple tasks can tire your brain and throw you off focus in the long run. It’s simply impossible for one to truly focus on multiple tasks that require analysis and brainpower. The brain needs rest and can only work for such capacity in between resting, so forcing yourself to accomplish tasks regularly may take a toll on your mental well-being in the long run.
It can seem like you are successfully managing all of the tasks given to you at the same time, but switching between multiple tasks makes it harder to get tasks accomplished properly. Stop letting your output suffer, instead work on your tasks one by one throughout the day. You will be accomplishing more and keeping your mental focus within healthy levels.
Set Your Expectations For the Week
Working smart involves being mindful of your tasks beforehand. This helps you anticipate and prepare yourself mentally for the tasks you have to complete within the week.
When planning, place the bigger, harder, more pressing tasks in the earlier parts of your week or day, this allows you to sort them out first and be more relaxed as the week goes on. During times when setbacks may come in the middle of your hard tasks, you have the rest of the week as a buffer to make up for the lost time. By doing this, you are able to take on tasks with ease, no matter how hard they may come off as. Set yourself up for success by front-loading your week.
Accomplish Similar Tasks Together
Simultaneously finishing similar tasks can help you work more efficiently because while it may seem that you are multitasking, you’re not switching back and forth between different types of tasks, making you able to accomplish similar tasks in a shorter period. This is especially useful for small tasks because you can knock out a bunch at once and warm yourself up for the heavy tasks to follow.
To maximize productivity, try blocking off time for the things that distract you such as answering text messages, talking to your seatmate, or checking your social media feed. You can even chunk small tasks together and get them done between meetings to use your time efficiently.
Be Mindful Of Your Energy Levels When Taking On Tasks
When planning tasks for the day, a common mistake is ignoring their energy level for the day. Without realizing it, this has a great effect on one’s productivity. While everyone’s energy levels spike up at various times throughout the day. Some are most productive when they wake up, while some are most alert and mentally present during the mid-day. This built-in body clock in everyone is called their “Cicardian Rhythm”
If you know you’re most productive right before lunch or know that you are going to work lacking sleep, don’t plan meetings or take on heavy tasks as soon as you get in. Try to communicate first via email and catch up with them mid-day, or start with small tasks to jog your memory and serve as a warm-up for the set of tasks lined up.
Make a habit of putting in your most challenging work during the periods when you’ve got the most energy, and save easy tasks for when you’re dragging. Doing this will allow you to smartly allocate your workload throughout the day without tiring yourself too much.
Trim Your To-Do List
Nobody likes to go to work to be greeted by a long list of tasks waiting for them. A long queue of tasks seems daunting and hard to figure out how to start, making it daunting for anyone in an office setting. Avoid this by arranging your workload and dividing them into small and doable tasks.
A smaller to-do list is less daunting and more achievable. There’s nothing wrong with having a short to-do list if you’re getting real work done. Start with tasks that require the most urgency, and limit the list to three to four items at a time, so that you may easily track and focus on them one batch at a time.
Don’t get this wrong, you can get more than three things done. But the idea is to divide them into small sets to give you focus and a better sense of well-being from finishing the first three tasks you have planned.
Put Your Phone On Silent
One of the things that throw you off focus in the middle of the workday is the notifications that alert you on your phone. Try turning off all notifications while you’re working, or if that sounds too extreme, only turn them off during the periods you need to be most focused. Or you can figure out which notifications you need and do something to separate them.
Phones nowadays have a “Focus” or “Do Not Disturb” feature which allows you to turn notifications off apps that may distract you during certain hours of the day such as work hours or sleeping time. Try blocking or putting unnecessary notifications on silent while working. This gives you more to catch up on during your free time and fewer distractions during the day.
Utilize Your Breaks
Despite popular belief, making the most out of your breaks is one of the most effective ways to work smarter. Without real breaks, the brain gets tired, therefore easily prone to getting distracted. Once you’ve stopped the habit of multitasking, try taking a break between each task you focus on.
For task-driven work days, you could try time management methods such as the Pomodoro Technique to make you take the necessary breaks in between your workloads. Take advantage of these science-backed ways to take better breaks to make sure you’re making the most of them.
Taking regular breaks can help you be more productive compared to working nonstop. Effective breaks can help to reduce your stress levels so that you’re ready to jump back into grind time when you return to your work.
Taking breaks while learning new tasks can even improve how your brain retains memory. If you find yourself growing increasingly frustrated or stalled on a certain task despite your efforts, this may be a sign that it’s time to rest your brain and take a break.
By following these tips, work smart and impress the team in the workspace. Encourage the whole team to work smart and work hard by getting a commercial space for lease that is the beacon for a vision of a smart, integrated, and future-ready community in Greenfield City.
Greenfield Tower is Greenfield’s first high-rise office building in Mandaluyong that seeks to cater to the demand from BPO locators in Metro Manila. It also fulfills the complete masterplan promise of Greenfield District as a holistic urban community with residential, commercial, and office buildings that contribute to health and well-being with its green open spaces, wide sidewalks, tree-lined roads, and new recreation activities such as Pilates, Basketball Courts, gyms, Padel and many more activities that can alleviate stress after work.
To learn more about this futuristic commercial space for lease, click on the link below:
https://greenfield.com.ph/project/corporate-business/greenfield-tower/
Reference:
https://zapier.com/blog/best-ways-work-smarter-not-harder/