Attack Work-Related Stress – 7 Ways

Important Question

Are stresses on the job holding back your performance? Do you know how to attack work-related stress?

Sometimes, without warning, suddenly you become immobile in the middle of a work assignment or a project. You don’t where it came from or know what to do or how to move ahead. Your mind is locked tight and thoughts circle the drain, anticipating your inevitable defeat. It’s simply a matter of time until your co-workers and your supervisor realize you have failed and toss around blame.

Stress has a way of wrecking everything about your workday. Being in the moment and aware of what you are doing, and not overwhelmed by what’s going on around you though, can be a quick, easy way to get things back on track.

7 Ways to Attack Work-Related Stress

Below are 7 suggested ways to attack work-related stress and put some space between you and your reactions by analyzing and interrupting your feeling of stress.

Stay in the Moment
Find Your Emotions
Attack Your Stress with Normalcy
Look for Patterns
Redirect Your Focus
Allow Your Emotions to Take their Course
Reverse Your Approach

Review Each Way to Attack Work-related Stress

Let us review each of the 7 actionable strategies to attack work-related stress to see if you can conquer some of the concerns that may hold back your performance, your health, or even your career.

1. Stay in the Moment

You begin by taking a step back to examine the stressful thought, starting with the acceptance of the thought itself. This is the foundation of being aware. Trying to ignore the stress only diminishes your ability to deal with the situation. By giving the thought your attention, and then placing a label on it, you diminish the control it has over you and you begin to power away from it. For example, if you are worried about how your performance will affect your appraisal and whether you will receive a raise, you might start by telling yourself, “Yes, I am worried about how my boss perceives my value and whether that will hold back my career.”

2. Find Your Emotions

Once you have labeled your worries, identify the emotion accompanying them. Once you have got this, ask yourself candidly, what do your emotions make you feel like doing?

3. Attack Your Stress with Normalcy

Instead of avoiding the worry, pay mindful attention to it and remind yourself this worry is normal. Do this every time it comes up. Eventually, it will seem less threatening.

4. Look for Patterns

Do these worries creep up at certain times? Using mindfulness means you’re paying attention to your thoughts in the moment. Understanding your triggers is a great way to keep the worrying thought from happening at all, as you’ll find yourself catching those damaging thoughts much faster and will be able to shut them down that much faster.

5. Redirect Your Focus

With mindfulness, you are very much aware of the stresses as soon as they begin. This also means you’re capable of taking control of those thoughts and redirect them toward something else immediately, putting your attention there instead.

6. Allow Your Emotions to Take their Course

Stress comes with a hatful of negative emotions. Mindfulness means you’re aware of what you’re feeling right now. If you discover yourself succumbing io fear and anxiety coupled with worry, let these emotions occur naturally. Watch them as if from a distance, as it were. Rather than try to smother them, allow them to dissipate naturally rather than intensify by trying to fight them off.

7. Reverse Your Approach

Worried about taking on a new project or moving to a higher profile position? Rather than avoid it, try it anyway. By reacting with positive activity to worries you know are irrational, more frequently than not, you will discover you really had nothing to stress about in the first place. A word of caution? Sometimes worry is there for a good reason. Be careful which stresses you challenge.

Conclusion

Remember, the whole point of being conscious of your actions and reactions when you feel frozen is to be in the moment and pay very close attention to what’s going on both internally and externally. Stress really does not bear up under such close scrutiny. The act of simply paying attention will change your situation and reaction meaningly.

Flexicrew Support

Do not let the strain to fill an important position or difficulty of finding qualified workers be one of your work pressures.

If you need help planning for your balanced workforce this year, let Flexicrew help. Test us and see if we can attack work-related stress with a flexible workforce model.

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Why You Must Write Down Your Goals – 5 Unique Reasons

Introduction

Throughout this short little series on setting business or career goals, I’ve mentioned why it is important to write down your goals. That isn’t just because it’s easy to forget. Or because It helps you get clear on what you want. There’s a lot more to it and there are some very important reasons why you have to write down your goals.

I thought in today’s blog post, I’d share my thoughts on this subject and hopefully stimulate you to write down your own business or career goals going forward. By the way, this works for any type of goal, not just the business ones.

Increased Chance of Success

The simple act of setting a goal, even if it’s just in your mind, doubles your chances of success. That’s a pretty big deal in itself, isn’t it? If you take it a step further, and actually write down your goals, you’re 10 times as likely to succeed. Read that last line again please. That’s right…you can increase your chances of making it by 1,000%.

That’s mind-blowing!

Important and Effective Reasons to Write Down Your Goals– Science Based

There are a few different mental and psychological processes going on here that start to give us a glimpse into why it is so important and effective to write our goals down. The first is that it’s a lot easier to remember something that we’ve written down.

Example

You’ve experienced this firsthand with your grocery list. When you make a mental list of 10 or 15 things, you’re likely to forget about half of them when you get to the store. If you write out the list on the other hand, and then end up forgetting it on the counter, you will remember the vast majority of the items you needed.

This is explained through the fact that information has to be moved from one area of the brain to another to turn it from thoughts into written words on a page. A process called encoding is also involved. All of this helps you retain and store the information better. It’s the reason we’re asked to take notes during lectures in school.

Another Reason to Write Down Your Goals

Last but not least, when you write down your goals, you have something you can review regularly. This adds another layer of cognitive processing and increases your chances of success even further. Sadly, only a very small percentage of people make the time to regularly review and evaluate their goals. The ones that do are some of the most successful and highest achieving people out there. In other words, it’s something we should do as well.

Review

To recap…

Start by setting smart goals
Write down your goals in as much detail as possible
Set aside some time to review them regularly. This could be weekly, or even daily.
Decide what date you’ll reach your goal and how you plan to get there. Use realistic timeframes for achieving your goals.

Give it a that you work towards try for this coming quarter. Set yourself a goal. Be specific. This could be something like finally updating your company Employee Handbook or hiring a staffing agency to support your organization in the coming year’s recruiting efforts.

Write it all down and look at it every morning. This will help you stay on track and make time in your busy day to work on making progress towards your goals.

Flexicrew Assistance

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire, please reach out to one of our professional recruiters with many years’ experience in staffing. We will help you find the perfect candidate to meet your requirements.

Want to improve your overall recruiting strategy? Contact us Today to help create and implement your recruiting strategy to help you attract top talent as long as this tight job market lingers.

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You Must Know Your Status Right Now

Prologue

Are you ready to take your business or career to the next level and develop some desired improvement over the coming months? Great! Before you start to plot and plan what you want to do to make that happen, it is important to stop and look at where you are at. To be effective in taking your business or career to a higher level, you must know your status right now.

Why You Must Know Your Status Right Now?

You must know your status right now to be able to measure your growth & figure out what you should be working on to attain your desired improvements.

Business Planning Data

Business planning for future success is all about data. You can work most efficiently and spend your time and money most effectively if you know exactly what your starting point is. By recording data, you can start to see what actions are working, what is not, and what trends are starting to play out. And it all starts with knowing your status right now by recording your current position for effective business planning.

How to Record Business Planning Data

Let us take a look at some of the things you want to record. First though, you should decide how you want to record this information. You can write it down by hand in a notebook, open up a word document to do it digitally, or use a spreadsheet. I prefer a spreadsheet because I have the option to have it calculate additional useful information like weekly and monthly averages and even map it all out in graphics to help me get a clearer picture.

We Will Use Marketing Data as an example…

Traffic

To grow you need to expand your reach. That means getting more traffic, but also engaging the people that come to your site by encouraging them to click around and read more. Good things to keep track of are total visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, and of course where the traffic is coming from.

List / Subscribers

Your next goal is always to get these people on your list. Here you want to track total number of subscribers, conversion rates for each of your opt-in forms and pages, open rates for your emails, and also unsubscribes. As you start to collect and review this data regularly, you will get a much better picture of your subscribers.

Customers

Subscribers are great, customers are better. Start by keeping track of how many total customers you have and how many purchases per day, week, and month. Other good numbers to look at are total lifetime value of your average customer, repeat purchases, and refund rates.

Income & Expenses

Last but not least, look at your bottom line. This is your typical accounting data. You want to keep track of your income as well as your expenses. With those two sets of numbers, you can easily calculate your overall profit. I find it helpful to look at profit for the month, but track income on a daily basis.

Pulling it Together

Yes, you can look at most of this data in various different places like Google Analytics, your shopping cart, and your autoresponder service for example, but it is important to have it all in one place. This makes it much easier to connect the dots and see the relationships between the different sets of numbers.

Now that you have your initial data collection set up, make it a habit to update the numbers regularly so you can see what is working, what is not, and how much you are growing as you move through the coming months of next year.

Flexicrew Support

Flexicrew has assisted many employers in successful recruiting methods to attract high potential candidates. That improved their chances of hiring new temporary and permanent employees who will work out.

Want to improve your recruiting strategy even further? Call Flexicrew to create and implement your custom recruiting strategy to help you attract top talent as long as this tight labor market lingers.

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Business Planning Success Secrets for the Coming Year

Important Question

Let’s discuss the concept of business planning success secrets for the coming year. Do you set aside time regularly to plan what you want to do in your business or career? If it’s not something you currently do, I strongly encourage you to embrace it for the remainder of this year as well as the one coming up. Setting aside time at the end of the year, to plan out what I want to do and more importantly what growth or improvement I want to achieve in the coming year has been crucial to my own success. Over the next seven days, I want to share with you some of what I’ve learned and what I’ve found helpful.

Why Business Planning is the Success Secret?

Let’s start off by taking a look at why business planning is “the secret” to your success or at least to your skills development. There are a few different factors that come into play here. The first is efficiency. When you go in with a clear plan, you can focus on what’s most important. Instead of spending time trying to figure out what you should be working on. For example, what pieces of the puzzle are missing from your recruiting strategy, or what do you need to do to break through to the next management level. Planning lets you know exactly what you need to accomplish next.

3 Business Planning Success Secrets

I believe business planning to achieve your goals should follow a simple 3-step process:

Clear goal in mind and a plan for the year
Setting a big goal
Using your subconscious mind

We will spend time examining each of these steps below and in the next several posts…

1. Clear Goal in Mind and a Plan for the Year

As we’ll explore in a future blog post, with a clear goal in mind and a plan for the year, it becomes easy to walk backwards to create effective and efficient daily to-do lists. Work on what needs to get done each day and you will reach your goals.

2. Setting a Big Goal

Next, setting a big goal for yourself helps you think outside the box. If you don’t believe me, try it. Decide on a big goal for the coming month. Write it down. Keep it in front of you. Then get to work and start to notice what happens next. You start to think of things that didn’t occur to you before. Then, you come up with creative ways to get more accomplished. Next, you might decide to run an experiment that speeds up your team’s workflow or you reduce mistakes in the project you are working on.

The same happens when an important deadline comes up unexpectedly. Think back to that time when a surprise quarterly review rolled around, or the last time your manager told you she would stop by later in the day. You got very creative about organizing and presenting respectively.

3. Subconscious Mind at Work

Last but not least, let’s talk about the subconscious. So far, we’ve been focused on what we are actively doing to make progress by making a plan, setting goals, and following through. There’s another dimension to all this and that’s what’s going on in our subconscious mind. While you are busy plowing through our to-do list, commuting to and from work each day, and even sleeping, your subconscious mind is working towards those goals as well.

Conclusion

In short, setting goals and business planning success secrets are important because they help you improve your situation and get ahead. That means you end up with greater individual and team performance, more compensation for yourself or revenue for your business, and progress toward your objectives while spending less time working away at your job.

Flexicrew Support

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire or reviewing your business success secrets for the coming year, please contact one of our professional recruiters. We will help you to develop your workforce plans and quickly recruit quality candidates for your open positions.

How to Win with your Accountability Partner

Preface

Accountability partners help co-workers succeed and here we show you how to win with your accountability partner. What format topics and process and structure of the partnership arrangement will gain you the most wins with your accountability partner? If you’ve never had an accountability partner and are new to the idea, you may wonder how to handle this new relationship and what to discuss. Don’t agonize! It can really by quite simple.

Here’s how to get started and win with your accountability partner relationship. Remember one thing – An accountability partner relationship is a two-way street. You must support your accountability partner in taking steps that help meet his or her goals and win.

Resolve Your Meeting Process

You should have regular, consistent meetings with your accountability partner to maximize their effectiveness. These sessions might be in person, off-site at a coffee shop or if you’re virtual accountability partners, then these meetings might be held on Zoom or Google Hangouts. It doesn’t matter if you use technology to meet up or not. But you need to have a regular meeting place or process.

It may seem obvious but you should select an accountability meeting frequency that with both your needs and availability. It can be helpful to start meeting each month twice to four times. This allows you both time to review progress or obstacles and delays as you encounter them. It’s enough to get into a groove without becoming cumbersome. I use that frequency myself and find that anything less is just not effective

Determine When You Will Meet

But be mindful that the watchword is flexibility. You should have permission to change your meeting place or time, depending on what’s going on in your job or your accountability partner’s work schedule. For example, if you become accountability partners with another worker during the summer months, you both may have greater flexibility when to meet. But then during the school year you may find that you need to adjust your meetings so that you can spend more time with your children in the shorter time they have available after school.

This is a normal part of a accountability partnership arrangement. So, it’s important to periodically review your respective schedules to see if another time slot would work better for both you and your accountability partner.

First Meeting: Point Out Your Goals for this Relationship

Mark Twain famously said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” During your first session, you will want to talk about your values and goals with your partner. You will probably have a mix of short-term and long-term business goals or for your life.

You and your accountability partner can help one another break down each other’s long-term goals into easy, manageable steps. For example, if your long-term goal is to publish a Kindle ebook on your market or industry to achieve peer recognition, respect, and admiration, then your short-term action steps would be items like ‘outline my Kindle book’ or ‘contact a designer to create my book cover.’

Follow Up to Really Win with Your Accountability Partner

In follow up meetings, you’ll want to review the steps you took since your last session together. Did you complete all your agreed action steps? Did you forget something or run into a problem that prevented you from completing one of your action steps? Can your accountability partner come up with ways to try to overcome this roadblock?

Celebrate a Win with Your Accountability Partner

Don’t just review the difficult tasks – the ones that you or your partner are struggling to accomplish. Be sure to celebrate when either one of you meets a milestone or accomplishes a goal. Celebrating accomplishments can be simple—like going out for lunch together or if you’re virtual accountability partners, you might send your accountability partner a small gift card that may be pertinent to the achievement. By celebrating your success together, it further motivates you and makes it more likely that you’ll achieve even bigger goals.

Wrapping Up

Be understanding and tolerant with yourself and your new accountability partner as you both learn how to navigate this new arrangement and meet your goals. If something isn’t working for either of you, you should articulate that and ask for what you need to succeed. That is how to win with your accountability partner.

Flexicrew Support

Flexicrew has advised many HR recruiters and functional hiring managers on successful recruiting methods for finding the right candidates. That reduced the chance of their making the most common recruiting mistakes.

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire, please contact one of our professional recruiters who have many years’ experience in staffing.

How to Reach More Goals with an Accountability Partner

Introduction

Have you wondered whether you could reach more goals with an accountability partner and move further up the ladder at work? Maybe you’re not where you want to be in your job or your business career. You have goals, but you might be disappointed with your progress toward achieving them. Are you just inching toward them? Does it feel like every step toward your goals is a struggle and you’re just not seeing the results you want in the timeframe you set out to achieve? You may not even feel self-motivated. Sometimes you could even feel stuck and unable to change your work performance to become unstuck.

Take heart! Relax! You’re not alone in this feeling. Many businesspeople experience feelings of being stuck with an inability to reach their goals. You probably started out with plenty of energy but within a few days or a few weeks, your energy fizzled out like the air escaping from a filled two-day old balloon. Weeks and maybe even months have passed and you’re not any closer to achieving your goals. There may be an answer there for you to reach more goals by selecting an accountability partner.

An Accountability Partner Might Be the Answer for You

An accountability relationship is a simple way to get back on track, get into gear and start moving toward your goals. It’s easy to set a goal and make no progress when no one is looking over your shoulder. Especially for long-term goals. But when you have an accountability partner it is much harder to slack off. This is because we often work harder to honor commitments we made to other people than we do the commitments we make to ourselves.

This may seem off-the-wall but consider Weight Watchers. It’s a weight-loss program with accountability built right into it. From the weigh-ins to the weekly meetings, members are accountable to each other. The meetings are filled with people that support each other in the goal to better their health and fitness.

Reach More Goals with an Accountability Partner

There are three key ways to reach more goals with an accountability partner:

an accountability partner will help you shape your goals
an accountability partner will help you break down your goals
An accountability partner will help you deal with roadblocks

Let us deal in turn with each of the 3 ways to reach more goals with an accountability y partner

1. An Accountability Partner Will Help You Shape Your Goals

An accountability partner can help you shape your goals, so you set ones that are achievable. For example, you could set goals to study for your certificate, complete that task that’s been hanging over you, start that complex project that you know will propel your career forward, and spend more time with loved ones. An accountability partner would gently point out that those are good goals but will be difficult to achieve at the same time.

2. An Accountability Partner Will Help You Break Down Your Goals

It’s good to set ambitious goals, ones that force you out of your comfort zone and make you grow. But ambitious goals must be broken down into smaller steps. That’s where an accountability partner comes in. A smart partner can help you focus on taking one step at a time until you reach your big goals.

3. An Accountability Partner Will Help You Deal with Roadblocks

Everyone encounters roadblocks at some point when they go after their goals. But an accountability partner can help you brainstorm ways to get around your obstacles and find success. For example, if your goal is to launch a web-based talent tracking system but the tech stuff has you feeling confused, then your accountability partner could offer both moral support and fresh solutions.

Wrap-up

With the support of an accountability partner, you’ll be able to break away from the rut you’re in. You’ll also feel more energized and be able to tackle your goals once again. Remember the three ways to reach more goals with an accountability partner. He or she can help you shape your goals and break down your goals into manageable chunks. Then when you have started taking actions toward your goal achievement, you may face hurdles. Your effective accountability partner is there to assist you in recognizing potential roadblocks in advance and defining options for overcoming them. Or if you stumble over a hurdle on the way to attaining a goal, the accountability partner can support you in brainstorming ways to surmount the hurdle. And that’s why you will reach more goals with an accountability partner.

Flexicrew Support

If you need support in achieving your workforce goals, Flexicrew will help in shaping your workforce vision and in recruiting the talent you need to fulfill your goal.

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire, please contact one of our professional recruiters who have many years’ experience in staffing.

How to Find the Right Accountability Partner

Introduction

When you have decided to engage an accountability partner, what is the first thought that comes to mind? As a businessperson looking to find the right accountability partner, you might be worried that you will not find someone. While it is true that an accountability partner is not a common circumstance, there are abundance of other workers looking for accountability partners too.

You are not alone in your search, and it can be helpful to have someone who understands what it is like to tackle business responsibilities. Or if you are a remote or hybrid worker, it is even more important to select an accountability partner because of the sometimes-lonely role you play and juggling both home and business duties.

Suggestions to Find the Right Accountability Partner

4 considerations when you are concerned how to find the right accountability partner are:

Create a List of Potential Candidates
Look for Matching Values
Start with a Short-term Arrangement
Consider Paid Options

1. Create a List of Potential Candidates

The initial step you should take when looking for an accountability partner is to make a list of people you already know that might be a good match. You can start by thinking of co-workers in your department or workers in other areas of your firm that have complementary functions. Or those with similar jobs to yours but work on different projects. But may be an accountability partner in your company feels a little too personal. Then you might consider a worker who performs your function but in a different company or industry.

You should also think about any networking groups that you participate in. Is there anyone there that you connected with, and feel might be a good business match?

Of course, you do not have to limit your search to offline networking groups. You can also look for a virtual accountability partner if you like. Make a post in Facebook or LinkedIn groups explaining your search to find the right accountability partner. Let people you meet know you are looking for one, and what your needs are. You may get a response from someone that would be pleased to collaborate with you because they have the same objective as you.

2. Look for Matching Values

Carefully consider your potential accountability partner. What is an important trait when you are trying to find the right accountability partner? You want someone in your corner that shares your values. If you have conflicting values, neither of you will get the most from your accountability sessions. For example, if you value helping employees succeed more than anything else, but your partner values furthering his or her career first, even at the expense of her employees then you are not going to relish your partnership very much. You cannot be supportive of each other because your values are not in alignment.

Before you agree to begin an accountability partnership with someone, take time to do your research. Look at their past actions, reputation, and character. Are they always complaining about their subordinates? Do they share negative news constantly? Do employees who previously worked for him have a low opinion of him and his style? These are all warning signs that you may not be a good match with this other worker, that you have not found a correct match yet, and that you should continue your search for the right one.

3. Start with a Short-term Arrangement

When you find another businessperson that you think might make a good accountability partner, then the real process begins. Make sure to keep things informal at first before you commence the endeavor. You want to agree to a limited time arrangement in the range of about six weeks to three months. This will be good trial period to work out a mutually agreeable process, assess the arrangement, work the kinks out and begin to see preliminary results. After this period, you can evaluate your partnership and decide if you would like to continue it.

Plan for an hour or so for your first meeting. This will offer you and your partner time to talk about your core values, your goals, and your business principles. Keep your first meeting’s agenda at a higher level and not try to get into the details or the specifics of what you want to accomplish going forward.

It can be motivating to get to know your accountability partner so take your time and do not rush your first session together.

4. Consider Paid Options

When you are searching for and trying to find the right accountability partner you might just discover something interesting. Sometimes, you need more help than one or two accountability partners can offer. In that case, you may want to consider paying to join an accountability group or business mastermind. These groups give you a chance to meet regularly online and talk with other business personnel and business owners. If this kind of support still is not enough, consider hiring a business coach to guide you through your business goals and action items.

Wrap-up

It can take time to find the right accountability partner that you connect with. Just keep patiently searching and you will eventually discover an associate that is a solid fit for you.

Review

Why find an accountability partner – Having an accountability partner to give you feedback or generate ideas will keep you motivated to produce.

Your accountability partner will keep you on track with your goals and activities, particularly when you find it impossible to do so yourself.

Find the right accountability partner – Define your goals. Finding a suitable partner involves setting clear goals. Discuss with coworkers to find an accountability partner you trust and value. Interview possible partners to understand their experience, skills and what they bring to an accountability partnership.

Make an ideal candidate list and write down potential candidates who satisfy your goals.

Understand your value system and seek those who match your values.

Kick off the process once you have hit on a match and keep meetings short and informal in the beginning.

Agree on a trial period to see if the arrangement will work out.

Finally, if fellow workers cannot suffice, consider paid options among consultants, counsellors and coaches who can provide the very support that you believe you need. An advantage of hiring this support is that they are trained people who will work for your goals, and you will not need to reciprocate as you would with a co-worker.

Flexicrew Support

If you need support in achieving your workforce goals, Flexicrew will help in shaping your workforce vision and in recruiting the talent you need to fulfill your goal.

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire, please contact one of our professional recruiters who have many years’ experience in staffing.

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Organizing Your Work Tasks – 6 Tips

Introduction

Organizing work tasks is vital to being productive. It is the foundation for better planning and executing your workday. This requires you to create a system where you can easily find what you need when you need it. It also necessitates arranging and scheduling time for the tasks that are most important to you. It’s true that organizing work tasks can go a long way in helping you achieve your goals.

6 Tips for Organizing Your Work Tasks

There are several ways you can go about organizing your work tasks and responsibilities to improve productivity, and we’ve included 6 tips below to help you get started:

Set Goals
Create Daily Task To-Do Lists
Use a Planner
Track Your Progress
Declutter Your Email
Keep a Well-arranged Work Environment

1. Set goals

Setting achievable objectives for your workday will help you stay focused and productive. When you set specific goals with steps and a timeframe for completing them, it’s easier to organize your work into manageable tasks. Be sure to create and prioritize both your short-term and long-term goals to keep yourself on track!

Why?

Respond Effectively to Change

You must keep an open mind for surprises. Events change and that dictates modifications to your goals. This is a fluid exercise where you must review your goals periodically. That frequency depends on your business and market and how swiftly changes occur (and their significance).

2. Create Daily Task To-Do Lists

Task lists are different from goal lists. Goals represent how much you desire to attain and the timeframe when you want to attain it. On the other hand, tasks are the steps you need to perform to arrive at that desired result.

To keep up productivity throughout your workday, try using a Task To-Do list or Daily Planner. To-do lists are simple yet highly effective lists that can help you maintain focus throughout the workday. Detail written significant or urgent activities on your Daily To-Do list and organize them by priority.

For instance, you could place what you must complete before the close of business for the day at the top of your list. Document tasks that can be completed the next workday at the bottom of your list.

3. Use a Planner

Another of the ways you can go about organizing your work tasks is through use of a Planner. A formal Planner is a first-rate tool (a small book) to evaluate the efficiency of your work schedule. You can use a Planner to track your daily, weekly, and monthly goals and activities. You’re more likely to achieve your objectives and recall important details when you keep a record of what has been done and what is coming up in the future.

There are many types of Planners (also called Diaries by our ‘friends across the pond’). Some Planners have a space for every day, while others are weekly or monthly. Think about what kind of Planner would best suit you and your work. If you work on your computer often, you could also consider using a digital planner or app.

I use 2 Planners. I have a dated Weekly Planner that documents work at a higher level.

Then I have a Daily Planner that breaks the week into 5 separate days and details the individual tasks for each workday with attention to more specificity for accomplishments I judge can be finished each given day.

4. Track Your Progress

Tracking your progress is an effective approach to ensure you are attaining your goals in the timeframe you planned. It is also an excellent approach to maintain your motivation. when you recognize the amount of progress you’ve already realized it’s much easier to continue toward completion. You can also use progress tracking to help you figure out what times of the day and week you are the most productive and schedule your high priority tasks for those times in the future.

5. Declutter Your Email

If you’re like most workers, your inbox is clogged with emails. Cleaning up, arranging, and sorting your mails keeps them structured and makes it easier to locate important messages.

Create labeled folders in your email to manage all your messages and filters to automatically organize new emails into their proper folders. Labeling emails helps you stay on top of replies and keeps important and related documents together in one location.

6. Keep a Well-Arranged Work Environment

The final one of the 6 tips for organizing your work tasks is keeping a well-organized work environment. You should be able to find quickly and easily everything you need and want in an organized workspace. This helps your workflow be more consistent. Replacing tools and documents into their proper place, keeping personal items separate from work materials, and straightening your work area every afternoon are all examples of keeping a well-arranged environment. An organized workstation makes staying productive much easier.

Effect of Disorganization

Clutter in your workstation distracts your thought processes and diverts your attention from your important activities. Remove any thing from your workspace that you don’t use on a regular basis. Tidy up your work area at the end of each day and declutter once a week to keep things well-arranged and organized.

Summary

We offered 6 tips for organizing your work tasks gleaned from our experience with highly productive workers. Your goal for being more organized is to help you better plan your day and work more productively. When you’re able to focus on your high priority tasks and complete them on-time, you feel better about yourself, and your work and your job becomes more satisfying. There are several tips listed here that will help you get started with becoming more organized and productive.

Start out trying one or two at a time and see how they work for you. Remember, there is no one right way to be organized. Incorporate which of the 6 tips of organizing your work tasks to see what works best for you. That way you can achieve your goals and propel your workday to higher achievement.

Flexicrew Guidance

We are familiar with workers who are efficient at organizing work tasks. Many of them we have trained to do so to improve their job and career prospects.

If you need assistance finding individuals who possess such greater productivity qualities, contact one of our recruitment professionals Today.

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5 Distractions Attack Productivity and Some Simple Remedies

Introduction

This article identifies which 5 distractions attack productivity at work every day. Unfortunately, distractions are common, and you find them in every aspect of your work lives. They range from text messages to emails and phone calls, to scheduled or pop-up meetings. All these unplanned interruptions can have a major impact on your productivity.

Years ago, my firm surveyed over two thousand workers across a dozen industries who identified distractions as the biggest money waste for their organization and the biggest impact to their productivity. That is why it is imperative you have a plan for keeping your workflow and productivity on track.

5 Distractions Attack Productivity

5 distractions attack productivity daily. To help and encourage you, we review simple remedies for you to combat them:

Email Blizzard
Phone Interruptions
Multitasking
Too-Friendly Coworkers and Interrupting Associates
Distractions from Personal Responsibilities

1.Email Blizzard or is it an Avalanche?

Yes, you probably receive a blizzard of emails. Many are unsought, if not outright spam. Yet, it is not just the constant barrage of emails coming in. it is also the unreasonable expectation that you should respond to those emails quickly on some other worker’s timetable.

Remedy

Try setting aside specific times during the day to check and respond to emails. You may also find it helpful to set boundaries with work-related emails, such as not responding after-hours or on the weekends.

2. Phone Interruptions

It takes a person’s mind an average of 23 minutes to get back on track after a distraction. And sadly, our phones ring every 12 minutes on average. So, it should not be a revelation that it is so difficult to remain focused!

Remedy

When you really need to focus on a project and give it your full attention, try silencing your phone and turning off unnecessary notifications. Just like with email, set specific times you will check your phone during the day. If you find yourself still tempted to check your phone during times when you must focus and concentrate, you may find it best to leave it in your locker or in your car, your coat or even in a completely different room if you work from home.

3. Multitasking

Multitasking is also called task-switching. It has been recognized as one of the 5 distractions attack productivity. There is ample evidence multitasking significantly hinders productivity. This is usually a self-inflicted productivity wound. Not one brought about by others or outside events.

Remedy

Rather than trying to work on multiple things at once, the most productive workers focus on just one task at a time. If you have been a multitasker for a long time, you may find it challenging at first to work on just one thing. Introspection can be a notable way to retrain your brain to focus on the task at hand. Working from a prioritized list of tasks and taking short breaks throughout the day can also be effective ways to boost productivity.

4. Too-Friendly Coworkers and Interrupting Associates

We all have coworkers in our workplace that unfortunately seem oblivious to the fact that we have our own agenda and tasks to accomplish. Whether it is a chatty coworker at the workplace or your over-friendly neighbor dropping by during the day when you work from home, they are one of the 5 distractions attack productivity.

Remedy

Setting boundaries will help you stay on track, avoid unnecessary distractions, and maintain your productivity. Be polite but firm, and if you want, offer an alternative time and/or place to get together.

5. Distractions from Personal Responsibilities

If you periodically or permanently work from home, it can be appealing to try and do personal tasks during your workday. This should be a No-No!

Why?

See #2 Phone Interruptions. Same applies here.

Remedy

It is best to set aside work hours for specifically focusing on work, and non-work hours for personal tasks. If you do choose to complete personal tasks during work hours, set aside blocks of time and use a timer to keep you focused and on-task. Avoid doing this too often however because it takes your mind time to regain focus after changing tasks and that time adds up!

Takeaway

we have outlined in this article common work interruptions like the 5 distractions attack productivity. They can be really disruptive to your work efforts and results. However, with some organization and mindfulness, you can overcome these interruptions and stay on task. Utilize the tips we have provided as follows to help you boost your productivity and avoid unnecessary distractions:

setting aside specific times for checking emails
allocate specific times responding to texts
focusing on one task at a time
taking breaks throughout the day

Flexicrew Support

Flexicrew has advised hundreds of HR recruiters and functional hiring managers on correct interviewing techniques and successful recruiting methods that lead to quality workers. That reduced the chance of their hiring easily distracted employees. Remember these 5 distractions attack productivity and you do not want to hire those who fall prey to them.

If you would like support in recruiting your next new hire, please contact one of our professional recruiters with many years’ experience in staffing. We will help you prevent your team from making a recruiting Oops or getting distracted themselves.

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5 Daily Routines for Productivity

Introduction

Daily routines are a valuable tool if you are trying to increase your productivity. In this post, we suggest 5 daily routines for productivity. By taking the time to establish a daily routine, you can set yourself up for success. That ensures you are mentally prepared for the workday ahead. Surprisingly, one of the most fundamental aspects of a daily routine is setting aside time for self-care. By taking care of yourself first, you will be in a better position to take on the tasks of your workday.

5 Daily Routines for Productivity

Having any sort of routine will help improve productivity, but to really maximize your efforts, here are 5 daily routines for productivity you might want to add to your approach:

Choose 3 Must-Do Tasks for the Day
Lock-in and Stay Focused on Your Goals
Self-Reflection Prepares for the Workday
Schedule Frequent Breaks
Reflect on Your Workday’s Successes

1.Choose 3 Must-Do Tasks for the Day

The first of our 5 daily routines for productivity is for you to choose 3 Must-Do tasks for your workday.

Setting your purpose and feel for your workday is a chief element of any productive morning ritual. Do you want to be focused or scattered? Are you going in with a plan or merely reacting to others’ actions?

Will you allow interruptions and distractions attack productivity? Is your workday schedule merely a house of cards that can drift or go up in smoke?

Ultimately the best method of being more productive throughout the workday is to control the way your workday unfolds. And one of the easiest ways to accomplish that to be sure is by starting off your day by defining your most important tasks. These are the top 3 must-do tasks you want to accomplish that day. Recording these must-do tasks at the beginning of the day in your Daily Planner will help give you a clear picture of what having a successful day will include and give you an immediate sense of purpose.

2. Lock-in and Stay Focused on Your Goals

Recording, visualizing, and reflecting on your goals, mindset, and objectives can bolster any worker’s backbone and make your performance better on work tasks. I once read a book on productivity, Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail, which paraphrases a Ben Franklin quote and is like a Winston Churchill saying. Both these leaders achieved their plans against strong adversity. I came away with the conclusion that written goals separate them from mere dreams and wishes because writing them is a subtle, subconscious commitment to action and achievement.

When you can reflect on what you have accomplished, you receive a boost in your self-confidence. Reflecting on your accomplishments helps you feel like you can accomplish more (and want to). Which in turn helps provide motivation and drive for future tasks.

3. Self-Reflection Prepares for the Workday

You simply cannot always predict how your workday will roll out. For instance, you may get delayed in a traffic jam and miss an important meeting. Or you may have a sick family member that disrupts your day completely. However, including self-reflection in your daily routine for productivity helps you deal with challenges in a more effective and calm manner.

It is vital to start small if you are new to deep-seated reflection on your tasks. Being consistent is more important than intensity at the outset. Even simply sitting in a quiet place with your eyes closed for 2-3 minutes and focusing on your breath may be enough to get you started.

4. Schedule Frequent Breaks

This one of our 5 daily routines for productivity may seem contrary to accelerating your productivity. Don’t you have to work harder and longer and skip lunch to be a high achiever? Yet, if you continue to work when you need downtime, it sucks out your energy reserves to keep you going. You have certainly heard of working on adrenaline alone. But periodic breaks help your body release stress. It helps clear your thinking and provides you with a boost of energy. That enhances your productivity.

A reasonable approach is to take breaks when you need them. It is simply another of your daily routines for productivity. Listen to your body and schedule regular breaks away from your screen or your workspace at least every 90 minutes.

In fact, to make best use of these work breaks, take a walk outside to spend time in nature. There is evidence that breaks rapidly help rejuvenate and recharge your energy. When I worked in Los Angeles, if I ran into a tough problem or writer’s block. I sometime took a 20-minute drive along the Pacific coast and always came back refreshed and motivated.

5. Reflect on Your Workday’s Successes

The final one of our 5 daily routines for productivity is for you to reflect on your workday’s successes when you get back home.

At the end of the workday at home It is all too easy to wind down with Netflix to ‘relax.’ Unfortunately, the human mind does not cooperate. We are not wired that way. Instead, when we leave work issues unresolved, ideas and feelings linger and emerge at inconvenient moments (like when you are asleep or trying to get to sleep). You have probably heard the expression, ‘What wakes you up at 4 AM?” For me, I occasionally wake up with ‘The Horrors.’

On the other hand, a personal debrief can help with alleviating work-related stress. It is especially helpful when you focus on your successes and the positive results you achieved that workday. This routine can even affect the way you perceive your workdays and prevents descending into negative thinking. This does not need to take long. You could simply list the three impressive results you accomplished or dealings you had during the day.

Wrap-up

Most workers do not realize that productivity is a skill you can learn by having daily routines for productivity. It is like how you would work on your fitness or learn a new language. You can also practice becoming more productive. Try adding two or three of the routines we shared above into your daily habits and see how they works for you. Afterwards, you just might surprise yourself by how much more productive you can become.

Interested in More Productivity

Looking for ways to achieve greater productivity? You may be interested in our article, “5 Habits of Highly Productive Workers.” Or, “5 Enhanced Productivity Tools – Not What You Think.” Or contact us to discuss our 5 daily routines for productivity. If 5 daily routines for productivity are not enough for you, check out our “25 Time Management Tips.”

Flexicrew Support

Flexicrew, founded in 2008, focuses on fast and flexible staffing solutions.

Flexicrew takes pride in the role we have played supporting our associates (and certainly our clients} for 14 years. We are particularly proud of our combined accomplishments in recent years. Our professional staff has positively supported our clients with quality workers, both permanent and contract employees, and strategic insights. We offer creative and customized talent services, valuable expertise, experience, and market knowledge in finding and hiring qualified candidates.

If you think you could use some staffing support to find and hire productive workers, contact us Today to discuss your requirements.

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