Shouldn’t the Pareto Principle really be called the “Pareto Princi”? Either way, those 20% of things that give us 80% of the benefit are low hanging fruit and are one of the most important opportunities we have – these are the things we can do right now to make an immediate difference to our productivity. Here are 10 quick-and-easy things you can change about your workspace:
1. Always keep a pad small pad of paper and some working pens/sharpened pencils ready
Does every note you write start with a bit of scribbling to find a pen that works? Are all these notes on the back of used envelopes and electricity bills? There is a better way you know! I use an A5 pad after hearing an inspirational nugget from Kelly Forrister who noted that the problem with having A4 pads around the place is you feel guilty jotting a quick note onto this expanse of white, whereas with a smaller pad you just bang it down and move on. Silly, but so true.
2. Organise your My Documents/computer files
Yes you know they are a mess. Yes it takes you 10 minutes to find anything, but chaos is good right? Get them in order! Not only will you save masses of time having things where you can find them, you will also become more efficient by remembering when you have done something similar in the past, and be inspired by things you have forgotten about.
3. Tidy your desk
“Tidy desk, tidy mind” is the old saying – you should only have out on your workspace what you are working on at that moment in time. This creates the discipline of filing everything else somewhere you can quickly find it. It also means everything in front of you is relevant to what you are doing now and consequentially allowing you to better focus your thoughts.
4. Have your consumables handy
Printer cartridges, new pens, lead for your automatic pencil. If they run out mid-flow then you will waste 30 minutes heading to the store to get more. And you’ll do this for each of the three. Instead, carry back-ups of everything and when you break into these you still have plenty of time to order them online from a cheaper source.
5. Label your plugs
This is a really anally retentive one. If you are like me, the underneath of your desk looks like a power plant – I can count 14 plugs at the moment, and I am sure there are more lurking elsewhere. What happens when you need to get your Blackberry charger ready for the trip away? 20 minutes carefully following each lead back to a device, accidentally shutting down your desktop computer along the way? A sticky label on each one with a two-word description and life is a little easier.
6. Use Google Docs
Can’t sort something out as the paper work is at home? Not able to use that down time at the airport to update your finance spreadsheet as it is on your home computer? Well there is a solution you know… Google Docs (there are competing products, but this is the one I have chosen to use) is an online word processor, spreadsheet, and Powerpoint-style application, enabling you to work on things where ever you maybe. Transfer documents to the cloud. Simples.
7. Open your window
Hot and stuff rooms are not conduits to high levels of productivity. Simply opening your window or door may have the biggest impact of all on what you get done today.
8. Schedule in distractions
Most of us are only human and so will suffer distractions during the day – by scheduling them in they will have less of a damaging impact, and allow you to enjoy them more. For example, if I am working from home then my baby son is a constant source of “I’ll just see what he is up to”. By telling myself I can play with him for 5-10 minutes every couple of hours I have something to look forward, and can focus on what I need to get done.
9. Listen to Beethoven
Or Mozart – apparently it boosts your spatial-temporal reasoning skills which can’t be a bad thing. Worth a try don’t you think? I am writing this to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, but I’m sure more austere work can come from the exercise.
10. Get another monitor
Not the cheapest option of the lot, but seriously – think of all the switching between e-mail, web, Word and Excel you do during the day. How many times do you write something down from your screen only to type it back into another programme. A second (or third) monitor can be picked up pretty cheaply – especially the perfectly good CRT monitors.
Comments on this entry are closed.