There are things in life that all of us look forward to, the day you get to live in your dream house, the travel vacation that you’ve been dreaming and saving for, and my favorite the certain amount of stash of cash that I can say I’ve made it. There are type of people that loves to gamble only if they know they will win, that doesn’t make them not a risk taker, I guess they are just more effective in mitigating the risk, most of the people that I know believes that hard work is the key to success and I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of living proof of that, but what if working hard is not just the only key to success? That there is a much better approach than working yourself out. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of the concept about working smart, maybe because lately my work has been exhausting, but I refuse to accept in my reality that I have to be this exhausted to be successful.
Deciding is not my strong suit, probably because deep down inside I always felt that I have to be perfect to be accepted, this is the reason why I usually over think things, maybe this is the reason why I have to be effective in every decision that I make because for me it is exhausting. I’m creating a plan of being good at decision making, before I usually say heck yes to whatever people ask me to do to all the task, I can say I’m more effective now with how I make decisions, I just learned to say no to things that doesn’t float my boat, so I guess I’m already on the side of working smart.
Everyone has a definition of working smart, for me it is about knowing what to prioritize and doing them, one of the most famous practice you will hear in our office is the Pareto principle, the principle is about 80% of the outcomes are produced by 20% of task you choose to made, that not all task are equally impactful base on the goal, that means identifying those 20% and doing them first will give you a better outcome than doing all the task, because we all know that time is scarce.
I won’t elaborate on how working smart benefit us in saving our energy, how it increases our productivity, motivation and self fulfillment I won’t, you do the math for that, but I will share things that I have been doing to work smarter:
- Make your morning routine, have you ever wake up hating your phone alarm, begging god for more time to sleep, hating the fact that you will have to drag yourself to work again? I know this feels familiar. Establishing a morning routine will help improve your mood, I usually do meditation then read a book while drinking my coffee, so no more drama for me in the mornings.
- Keep a to do list, but please do not make a long list, I was someone who put things on my to do list just for the sake of crossing them out, then if I won’t strike them out I feel like I can move them tomorrow talking about Mañana habit. Practice the Pareto principle, identify the top 3 to 5 things that should be done that day and you’ll feel the difference.
- Create a time-block, now that you identified the what are the important things to do on your to do list, set a time, block it and get em done!
- Respond quickly, have you ever hold off a response from an email, message or even a birthday greeting? Trust me, how helpful it is to respond immediately to those, and if you need to get back on someone about a task make sure you do it with 24hrs.
- Stick to what you have to say, did you ever had a quick pull up meeting which end up to be long and unproductive? It’s is not wrong to check have fun conversation but it is wrong if you don’t get things done because of it. Work on your how you communicate to people around you.
- Focus on one task at a time, people think that everyone should be able to multi task, but studies proves that we are more effective when doing one task at a time, you wouldn’t want your task half baked right?
- Set short deadlines(reasonable), do you remember the project that you have finished last minute style? Parkinson’s Law says that task at hand expands its time to fill the time available for its completion.
- Have a closing time routine, so after the fun and long day make sure that same as your morning, you create a routine to step back before you fully rest, don’t just fall asleep while browsing the social media, this is also the perfect time to create your to do list for the next day, this give you the clear mindset of what should be done tomorrow, I usually mixed it up with writing, journal entry then after I eventually end in listing the things I have to get done the next day.
Breakfast or Fastbreak who you gets there first will surely be the one who do the deed, taking action is what will take you to the lead, if you pause to strategize what should be done first, or if you get it done and then analyze what adjustment you have to make, it is all up to you, may all of your to do list for the day be strikeout.
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