Sometimes laziness can work to your advantage. If you find yourself putting off tasks longer than you should or feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over with minimal results, then use these tips to increase your productivity.
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Do you hate wasting time on tasks that seem trivial and unnecessary? Are you always looking for an easier way to accomplish something? You can use your laziness to find more efficient ways to complete tasks and eliminate unnecessary work from your schedule. You need to plug into your inner couch potato to find ways to increase the amount you can accomplish.
1. Which Tasks Do You Hate?
An easy way to start is to list the tasks that you hate doing. Imagine how much free time you could have if you did not need to complete these tasks anymore. Ask yourself if there are any steps you can cut out on each task? For example, a lot of your correspondence may be able to be handled through a carefully crafted form letter. You can add personalized touches to make it seem like you are not dealing only with forms, like a new introduction or a question about something personal or a compliment. Still if you have a lot of email that deals with scheduling a meeting or confirming appointments, form letters can make it easier to deal with your inbox. Look for similar ways to cut down on the steps in each task.
2. Separate Your Tasks Into Daily, Weekly, Monthly Groups
If you can group your tasks by how often you do them, you may find that you could still effectively reach your productivity objectives by doing the task once a week instead of every day. You may be able to speed up how long it takes to complete each task. For example, if you are trying to generate leads for your business each day, you may be just as effective in doing that in one three hour period each week, instead of spending an hour on it each day. Listing your tasks by when you do them can help you spot areas of overlap and allow you to combine tasks. For example, if you need to contact clients on a regular basis, you may be able to combine this with other aspects of your job like lead generation, which allows you to accomplish two things at the same time.
3. Finding a Way to Prioritize Your Tasks
When you are focused on finding more time to devote to certain tasks, you need a way to prioritize the other things you need to do each day. Some tasks are time sensitive and must be done at the scheduled time each day or each week. Other tasks are not, and may be pushed back to make room for more important tasks. You also need to be sure that smaller time priority tasks are not keeping you from reaching your larger productivity goals. If they are, you need to find a way to eliminate those tasks by either giving them to someone else to handle for you or by finding a workaround for them.
4. Eliminating Unnecessary Tasks from Your Schedule
If you jot down everything you do during one day or everything you do each day for a week, along with the amount of time you spend on it, you can better judge which tasks you can eliminate from your schedule. As you make your lists, you may also note what this task helps you to do and if it does not promote your productiveness or bring you the rate of return you were expecting, you may be able to eliminate it. For example, when you first opened your business, you may have started out with a blog, but if you find that you are not generating enough views or leads each month, you may be better served by using a static website and pursuing a different type of marketing. When you look at all of your tasks this way you can be sure you are receiving the correct rate of return for the effort you put into it.
Gwen Stewart is a business development professional and writer for Outbounding.com. Her line of work often requires she have a great solution to transfer large files and meet tight deadlines. Any spare time she can scrape together finds her hiking, reading and enjoying the company of great friends.
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