07.18.07
Productivity Boost: Prioritize and Delegate Tasks
The business day is increasingly filled with distractions and nonproductive diversions. If you want to succeed at doing more in less time you need to learn to increase productivity. There are many techniques to employ when determining how to best accomplish your work. Presented here are two sure-fire ways to see positive results and help focus on the highest value time investments.
- Identify and prioritize your tasks by the value returned against the time required to complete them. One clever way of sorting out the highest value items is to organize your tasks as if you are going to pay someone to perform them for you. Naturally when your money is at stake you will favor only important tasks as you would not want to pay someone else to shirk off the work. You will quickly realize that this simple technique will enable you to focus on truly worthwhile tasks and push less important tasks to the background.
- Once you have established your streamlined list, execute the tasks and try to defer interruptions like nonessential meetings or phone calls for another time. Sometimes you may not always be the super hero able to do it all on your own. For these situations you can delegate some tasks to your subordinates or co-workers. This will increase productivity if done correctly, but beware of overburdening others. Once again you can imagine you are paying to have these tasks completed and should therefore be realistic in your goals.
Some tweaking of priorities may be required here, but if you manage to find the balance between tasks you can complete yourself and those that are delegated to others, the rewards of higher productivity will be yours for the taking.
Zenaida C. Solis said,
August 7, 2007 at 1:22 am
I agree with your productivity boost advice.
However, I would like to add that when delegating, we have to be sure that the person we are delegating to is responsible and must meet your deadline .
Productivity is essential in the businessworld and so with personal tasks.
sunny said,
August 10, 2007 at 7:03 am
I agree with your productivity boost advice.
However, I would like to add that when delegating, we have to be sure that the person we are delegating to is responsible and must meet your deadline .
Productivity is essential in the businessworld and so with personal tasks.
Tina said,
August 22, 2007 at 8:28 am
Productivity is even more difficult to attain for those of us working from home. The many distractions can really sidetrack us from getting any real work done. I find a real boost to my daily productivity from just limiting my email activity. I set aside a certain amount of time to check emails and that’s it. The rest waits until I’ve reached my goals for the day.
Persia said,
September 2, 2007 at 12:32 am
I like to prioritize my tasks by how much money I will save by doing it. For example high productivity means cooking my dinner instead of dining out. I save money that. It increases my productivity. Watching TV never saved me money so it is low priority.