More than 10 years working experience in my current company, I realized one thing: working hard does not mean being productive. If you have worked full time at a company and still need to take the work to home to complete unfinished tasks, or always spend a lot of hours to get it done but seem your productivity isn't improving, your problem is that you must find a way to work smarter.
You will be very productive if you know how to simplify all things, at that time you will find the shortest way to get it done. Successful people often focus their time on their main priorities and think about how to make things run as smoothly as possible. Here are some tips that may help you get the best performance at work.
1. Develop time management skills:
The reason I put this item in the first place is because it's really important.
One of the purposes of working smart is saving and managing time. Time is gold and silver for the smart employee. Therefore, good time management skills are a key factor to help a person practice smart working habits.
There are a few next tips that you should apply to know how to allocate time and get the job done as planned.
- Follow the 80:20 rule: 20% of the important tasks create 80% of the value. Spend 80% of your time on the important things you need to do.
- Eliminate distractions during your work
- Don't let urgent tasks interrupt the important tasks you're doing
- Create to-do lists and prioritize them
- Take advantage of reminders, scheduling etc…
2. Arrange and set priority for each task:
When receiving a new task or project, we often have too many thoughts about where to start and what to do.
And the result is we built an extremely to-do list and got confused which one should do first. It's a big limitation that prevents you from focusing on the main task because you haven't focused your energy on the tasks that are really important. Instead, we should practice keeping your to-do-lists closely by focusing only on the 3-5 most important things.
Prioritize the most important and urgent tasks, then move on to less important tasks. Adjusting this will make you feel less anxious. In addition, the important tasks you should do in the morning because if you leave them late, you will have less time to handle them effectively.
3. Don't handle too many tasks and "ask for help" when overloading
Do multi-task is not a smart choice. A smart employee never takes on too many things to do nothing properly.
If you are the manager/ leader, distribute the work equally to each person. If you are a subordinate, let’s communicate with the manager/leader about how you can handle the workload to avoid being overloaded, leading to poor performance.
4. Improve your own capacity
In order to work effectively, always pay attention to improving your knowledge and skills. Now we have a lot of tools such as websites, apps to help you to manage work and time more effectively. Sometimes we find that the working day is not effective because we spend too much time figuring out how to make a professional excel files, emails, edit power point etc… while you can self-study these skills on the internet or training center.
5. Adjust your attitude
You will be more productive if you have a “positive attitude”. With a “positive attitude” will always actively manage everything whenever they can. In addition, having a good attitude at work also helps you actively learn, plan, set standards for yourself, help you be responsible and always have the progress to work effectively.
Moreover, practicing a positive, progressive attitude will help you have a quick reaction when work or problems arise, and find a simple solution in most cases.
6. Communication
We are always aware that practicing communication and cooperation skills with people are very important. I believe that whether you are a manager or an employee, you have to work with other people. Then, having good communication skills will help you communicate in the most accurate way and avoid wasting time due to misunderstandings.
Besides, by your communication skills you will receive the best support from others to complete your work.
7. Reduce stress
Stress is the biggest enemy that can affect your performance. Stress has an impact on your physical, emotional, behavioral and even health, energy, and alertness for work. Therefore, practice proactively planning your next work, this way will help you somewhat achieve your expectations and reduce unnecessary stress and anxiety.
8. Do more of things that help you enjoy the most
Be honest that not everyone is lucky enough to do what we love for a living. Even if you chase your dreams, there will still be tasks you don't like doing. In that case, get other tasks done more quickly and spend more time doing what you are truly loving. You will feel like you are still fulfilling your responsibilities while being more inspired, challenged, and productive.
In conclusion:
You can choose to work hard or work smart, or even both. But you should keep in mind that only doing nothing really slows us down. If you're working hard but the results aren't working, try to find the best suitable way to work smarter.
