Staying Organized at Work – 7 Tips and Strategies for Increased Productivity
Introduction
In the present hectic business environment, staying organized at work is essential for your success. With multiple projects, deadlines, tasks and maybe even people to manage, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and fall behind. However, with the right strategies and tools, you can stay on top of your workload and increase your productivity.
7 Tips and Strategies for Staying Organized at Work
In this article, we will explore tips and strategies for staying organized at work.
Prioritize Tasks
Use a Calendar
Create a Filing System
Use To-Do Lists
Take Regular Breaks
Limit Distractions
Delegate Tasks
Let us explore each of these 7 strategies in detail…
1.Prioritize Your Tasks
One of the most effective ways to stay organized is to prioritize tasks. Start each day by making a list of tasks that need to be completed and prioritize them based on their importance and urgency. This will help ensure that important tasks are completed on time and prevent less critical tasks from distracting you.
2. Make Good Use of a Calendar
Using a calendar is another great way to stay organized. A calendar can help you keep track of important dates, deadlines, and appointments. It can also help you schedule your time more efficiently and avoid conflicts. There are many different calendar apps available, such as Google Calendar or Outlook, which can sync with your phone and computer for easy access.
3. Create a Filing System
Creating a filing system can help you stay organized and easily access important documents. Whether it’s physical or digital, having a system in place can save you time and prevent the frustration of searching for lost documents. Labeling folders and files clearly and consistently will also help you quickly locate specific documents.
4. Use To-Do Lists
To-do lists are a classic but effective tool for staying organized. They can help you keep track of what needs to be done and provide a sense of accomplishment as you check off completed tasks. To-do lists can be created on paper or digitally, such as on a task management app like Trello or Asana.
5. Take Regular Breaks
Taking regular breaks throughout the day is essential for staying focused and productive. This may seem counterintuitive, but taking breaks can actually increase your overall productivity by preventing burnout and helping you maintain your focus. Short breaks can include taking a walk, getting a snack, or simply stepping away from your desk for a few minutes.
6. Limit Distractions
Distractions can be a major roadblock to staying organized and productive. Set yourself up for success by limiting distractions as much as possible. This can include closing unnecessary tabs on your computer, turning off notifications on your phone, and finding a quiet workspace.
7. Delegate Tasks
Delegating tasks can be a great way to stay organized and increase productivity. If you have a team, consider delegating tasks to team members who are better suited for certain projects or who have more time available. This will help prevent burnout and ensure that all tasks are completed on time.
Summing Up
In conclusion, staying organized at work is essential for success. Prioritizing tasks, using a calendar, creating a filing system, using to-do lists, taking regular breaks, limiting distractions, and delegating tasks are all effective strategies for staying organized and increasing productivity. Find the strategies and tools that work best for you and start implementing them into your daily routine for maximum success.
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It’s necessary that companies prioritize upskilling to remain competitive in today’s tight and swiftly evolving job market. Upskilling is the process of acquiring new skills or improving existing ones to adapt to changing job demands. It is crucial for businesses to invest in upskilling their workforce as it helps improve productivity, increase employee satisfaction and retention, and create a culture of continuous learning.
7 Tips Help Companies Prioritize Upskilling
In this article, we will discuss seven tips to help companies prioritize upskilling during the present workplace turmoil. They are:
Assess their Skills Gap
Develop a Learning Culture
Offer Training & Development Opportunities
Provide Support & Incentives
Provide Support & Incentives
Integrate Upskilling into Career Development Plans
Measure and Evaluate
We’ll examine the correct way companies prioritize upskilling by looking at each factor individually.
1. Assess the Skills Gap
The first step to take when companies prioritize upskilling is to assess the skills gap within the organization. A skills gap analysis helps identify the skills and knowledge that employees lack, which are necessary for the company’s growth and success. This analysis can be done through employee surveys, performance evaluations, and job descriptions. Once the skills gap is identified, companies can prioritize which skills to upskill first, depending on their urgency and impact on the business.
2. Develop a Learning Culture
Organizations need to develop a culture of continuous learning to prioritize upskilling effectively. This means creating an environment where employees are encouraged to learn and grow, and where learning is integrated into daily work routines. Managers should lead by example by prioritizing their own upskilling and providing support and resources for their teams to do the same. A learning culture fosters innovation, adaptability, and employee engagement.
3. Set Clear Goals
Clear goals help employees understand what they are expected to achieve and how their upskilling efforts contribute to both a worker’s career and the company’s success. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They should also align with the company’s strategic objectives. By setting clear goals, companies prioritize upskilling, can track progress, evaluate the impact of upskilling efforts, and make necessary adjustments.
4. Offer Training & Development Opportunities
Companies must provide training and development opportunities to help employees acquire new skills and knowledge. This can be done through on-the-job training, formal training programs, mentorship, coaching, and e-learning. The type of training offered should align with the identified skills gap and be delivered in a format that suits employees’ learning styles. Companies can also encourage employees to pursue further education or certifications to enhance their skills.
5. Provide Support & Incentives
Employers should provide support and incentives to encourage employees to prioritize upskilling. This can be in the form of time off for training, financial assistance for further education, or recognition for achieving upskilling goals. Managers can also provide feedback and guidance to help employees stay on track and identify areas for improvement. Offering support and incentives shows that the company values employees’ professional
6. Integrate Upskilling into Career Development Plans
Firms should integrate upskilling into career development plans to help employees advance their careers within the company. Career development plans should be tailored to each employee’s skills, goals, and aspirations. Employees should have opportunities to acquire new skills, take on challenging projects, and receive feedback and mentoring from managers. By integrating upskilling into career development plans, companies can retain top talent, increase employee engagement, and build a skilled and motivated workforce.
7. Measure and Evaluate Upskilling Initiatives
Upskilling has become an essential part of talent management for companies as they seek to keep pace with technological advancements and stay competitive in their respective industries. Some firms invest heavily in upskilling programs to train their employees, improve their skills and abilities, and ensure that they are equipped to handle the changing demands of the business world. However, simply providing training is not enough – companies must also measure and evaluate their upskilling efforts to ensure they are achieving the desired outcomes.
Measuring and evaluating upskilling efforts helps companies to assess the effectiveness of their training programs. By tracking and analyzing metrics such as employee performance, engagement, and retention rates, companies can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize their upskilling efforts. This process can also help companies to identify high-performing employees who are excelling in their training programs and develop career progression plans for them.
Justifying Investment in Upskilling
Measuring and evaluating upskilling endeavors also helps companies to justify their investment in training programs. By presenting concrete data that demonstrates the impact of upskilling on business outcomes, companies can show the return on investment (ROI) of their training programs and secure buy-in to continue investing in employee development.
Moreover, measuring and evaluating upskilling undertakings can provide companies with a competitive advantage in the job market. Prospective employees are increasingly seeking out companies that prioritize employee development, and showcasing a robust upskilling program with data to back it up can help companies attract and retain top talent.
So, measuring and evaluating upskilling attempts is essential for companies to ensure they are achieving the desired outcomes, justify their investment in training programs, and maintain a competitive advantage in the job market.
Companies must measure and evaluate the effectiveness of upskilling projects to ensure they are achieving their desired outcomes. Metrics can include employee satisfaction, retention, productivity, and the impact of upskilling efforts on the company’s performance. Companies can also conduct regular skills gap analyses to assess their upskilling efforts. This detects whether they are addressing the most critical skills gaps. By measuring and evaluating, companies can make data-driven decisions and adjust their upskilling strategies accordingly.detects
Summary
In conclusion, upskilling is crucial, and companies prioritize upskilling to remain competitive in today’s workplace uncertainty. To effectively prioritize upskilling, companies must assess the skills gap, develop a learning culture, set clear goals, offer training and development opportunities, provide support and employee incentives to participate, integrate upskilling into employee career development plans and measure and evaluate upskilling initiatives.
Flexicrew Support
Flexicrew has advised many HR recruiters and functional hiring managers on correct interviewing techniques, successful recruiting methods and upskilling opportunities. That reduced the chance of their making the most common recruiting mistakes.
Would you like support in recruiting your next new hire who is eager to take advantage of upskilling opportunities? Please contact one of our professional recruiters with many years’ experience in staffing.
Mentors help leaders grow and lift them up. Being a mentor is a wonderful thing. Helping lift up on-the-rise leaders and help them grow through a mentorship relationship helps the mentor and the mentee.
Everyone faces tough times. Businesses close, projects fall apart, new launches are delayed, and poor relationships on your team can impact many other elements of the workplace . Leaders need other leaders to help. No one understands the struggles that leaders face better than other leaders. It’s important to lift leaders up and help them grow in the process.
Be There When Your Colleagues Need You
Leadership is its own club. People who lead need other people who lead to be there when times are hard…whether they ask or not. If you see someone in the leadership community struggle, get in there and offer your support. Reaching out and letting someone know you care can make all the difference in how well they cope during a tough time.
Note- leaders aren’t just work folk. A struggling mother or father is a leader. If you see someone who needs support, reach out and help lift them up.
Celebrate When Your Colleagues Win
It’s natural to feel a tinge of jealousy when your “competition” gets a win. Great leaders celebrate big wins whether they’re for the competition or their friends. Your genuine enthusiasm for other people’s success will only make yours stronger. There’s no limit to the amount of success available to you and those you are in leadership with. Get excited about their successes and genuinely congratulate and celebrate with them.
Step in When Your Colleagues Fall
Sometimes most workers as well as leaders have a setback or run into a hurdle they cannot overcome. An illness, injury, or even a discredit can set someone in leadership back. Be willing and able to step in when your colleagues falter. Offer to take some of their workload, offer to assist them in practical ways, or take the initiative and mentor for them in their absence. You’re a leader and there’s no better time to lead than when your fellow leader can’t.
Being in leadership is a sisterhood and brotherhood unlike any other. There’s a comradery between leaders who have worked hard to encourage, mentor, and motivate their teams. They need the same encouragement themselves. Leaders lean on leaders who ‘have been there.’ These understand and have the unique abilities to support them and help them grow too.
Who Can be a Mentor?
Reliable mentors can be anyone with the willingness to offer help. They could be a trusted colleague, supervisor, or manager. They could also be peers or even subordinates who have exhibited leadership qualities you admire. There are many ways to become a mentor and the most important thing is that you take the time to do it.
There’s no harm in starting small. Offer to help out with a task that’s not too difficult or time-consuming. This will give you an opportunity to get to know your mentee and see if there’s a potential for more. As you build relationships with those you mentor, they may be more likely to reach out for your help when they need it most.
Mentorship doesn’t have to be confined to the workplace. Anyone can be a mentor, whether they’re family members, friends, or even strangers. The most important thing is that you have the willingness and the time to offer help.
Conclusion
Summing up, good mentors help leaders grow especially early in their career and elevate them to new levels. A mentor provides support, guidance, and advice when needed to make their mentees better managers or leaders. They can help a young leader learn new skills and navigate through difficult situations. In times of struggle, a mentor can be a valuable listening ear and provide helpful feedback. A good mentor relationship is one that is mutually beneficial, with both parties gaining knowledge and growth from the experience. Are you ready to become a mentor?
Flexicrew Support
If you need assistance finding and recruiting quality candidates who possess either mentoring or leadership qualities, contact one of our recruitment professionals Today.
You’ve probably paid a penalty when you ran the risks of defying workplace rules in the past. It may have been a rule your boss made to keep you on-track and you learned a lesson from breaking it.
There are risks to every company rule you choose to break. But you may be the type who loves to defy them. Adrenaline rushes from rule breaking become addictive to some people.
If you don’t agree with certain rules of your work environment and plan to break them – maybe in your personal workspace, consider these five risks involved:
The risk of alienating people you need or feel more comfortable having work with you in your job
Think carefully about risks of defying workplace rules that can alienate you from the very people who could benefit you and whom you require. For example, if you go against your company culture or unwritten rules, you may cause workforce concern. Weigh the benefits and then act accordingly.
Lose your job
Some rule-breaking may result in the loss of your job or position in a company. For instance, when you insist that you can work from home and get more done. This may alienate other coworkers who commute to and from work each day. You may also miss out on valuable one-on-one time with your boss or others important to your job.
Expressing your opinion
Standing up for your values can be a risk that gives you great satisfaction and can boost your self-esteem. It may also alienate you from a close coworker – or group of peers. Beware of the consequences of your words and then do the right thing.
Unqualified for the job you’re in
It’s possible you landed your position by promising that you are a fast learner and meet all expectations required of you. At some point, you may be overwhelmed by the amount of work or learning process that you didn’t expect. Know what you’re getting into before leaping into a job you’re not qualified for.
Not taking yourself seriously
This rule needs to strike an equal balance. It doesn’t pay when you take yourself too seriously. You run the risk of other staff members perceiving you as pompous and a “know it all.” You must find the balance between being serious at times that require it and having fun at appropriate times. But if you don’t, other workers or those you supervise may never see you as the authority figure you want to be.
Summary
Risks of defying workplace rules can have a negative impact on some areas of your job or even in your entire career that you may not expect. Study the pros and cons of a rule before you decide to break it and then act in your best interest.
Prioritizing – key time management skill that you will use over and over in the work environment. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines prioritize as “to list or rate (projects, goals, etc.) in order of priority.” Being able to prioritize is a key skill for doing well with managing your time and that of others. If you are able to prioritize, you can determine what you should do first because it is urgent or important.
When you don’t prioritize, you might not complete those tasks. Or you might work on something less important or urgent first. If you don’t prioritize, you might be spending your time on the wrong things. Or you cold waste your time at work altogether. This bad time management practice can be harmful to your career, business relationships, or frankly many other parts of your life.
Examples of Prioritizing – Key Time Management Skill
For example, you have a bunch of projects to complete this week. On Monday you have a presentation to complete and on Wednesday you have a marketing plan due. What should you work on first? Because your presentation is due sooner, you should complete it first because you have more time to complete your marketing plan.
Now, what if you also have some important paperwork to turn in on Monday in addition to your presentation? What should you work on first?
You must complete both of them by the same time, but you will get in worse trouble if you don’t prepare the presentation than if you don’t finish your paperwork. Because of this reasoning, you must wrap-up both but work on the presentation first. You are a good time manager because you finish your presentation, hand in your paperwork and then do your marketing plan.
Another example is you have some associates coming over to your facility tomorrow to help with setting next year’s trade association budget. On your to-do list is to put out copies of this year’s budget, define how the budget was actually spent, lay out grease pens, and make sure every member has a fresh notepad.
Importance and Prioritizing
What is most important and what should you do first?
Your associates are coming over to analyze and forecast. Therefore, you need to make sure the workshop tools are ready to be used or at least not taking up space. The trash is most likely to get noticed after that, so you will do that second.
Third, you can either tidy the meeting room or make sure there are enough chairs for everyone. You can do that last just in case you run out of time. So you decide to do coffee set-up for tomorrow. In just a moment of thinking, you were able to prioritize your to-do list. And you completed the most important things first.
Pro Tip: You’re always better off writing up the to-do list to be certain you haven’t forgotten any thing.
Practice
How can you improve prioritizing – key management skill? The best way to become better at prioritizing is to practice it. If you find that you are having trouble deciding what is most important or urgent, talk with a close associate to get their input. If you need, you can talk with more than one. They might not prioritize things as you do, but getting their opinion can be very helpful when forming your own.
Overall, the more you work on this skill, the better you will get at it. As you get better at prioritizing, your time management skills will improve. Knowing what to do with your time based upon the importance and urgency of your tasks is a great skill to have.
You will be able to use this time management ability in every area of your worklife. Careers, raises, promotions, and more can all make use of your prioritizing skills. The best way to manage your time is to know where to spend it and why, that’s what makes the prioritizing skill just so important.
Benefits of Prioritizing – Key Time Management Skill
With effective prioritizing for time management, you will:
Maximize what can be accomplished in a work day
Maximize the use of the limited resources
Identify critical areas for special attention
Identify tasks that can be delegated to employees
Track progress toward your goals
Flexicrew Supports You in Prioritizing – Key Time Management Skill
Many of our trained Account Managers will explain that employers don’t believe they can teach prioritizing but someone with the right attitude, practice and assertiveness will quickly develop the aptitude for time management skill on the job. Talk to one of Flexicrew’s professional recruiters and take advantage of their broad experience or just get some feedback on your current work situation. Call us Today.
You really should make an effort to train your team to focus. This will maximize their productivity during the workday.
The fast pace of the modern world makes it very easy to become distracted. There is often so much going on that workers become unfocussed and careless trying to get it all done at once. That decreases their ability to focus and to stay on task throughout its duration. You can retrain your team to focus and concentrate to handle extended periods of time dedicated to one singular thing.
The good news is that this is totally achievable, it will just take some work on your end and on theirs.
How can you train your team to focus?
Improve worker productivity and satisfaction – train your team to focus
Two simple ways…
Practicing focus for a significant amount of time and 2) minimizing time spent on electronics are two of the most effective ways to do that.
Practicing Focus
Because the brain is a muscle, you can teach your team to actually train their brains to work at an optimal level.
I’m not kidding.
Practice makes perfect is the key concept here, as the activity of repetition can help make focusing easier in the future. Remind team members not to neglect short breaks, though, as their attention spans are only capable of so much concentration.
Focal Techniques
This practice is comparable to an exercise routine. You usually have a set amount of time and reps for each activity, and your focus is set on the routine for its entire duration. Practicing focal techniques is similar:
Within each task there are certain amounts of effort required
Frequency and repetition of these activities causes muscle memory, even in the brain
Practicing Focus
Practicing focus also teaches your team how to reach a state of “flow”, which is equivalent to being “in the zone”. This is the optimal state for focus and productivity because they are completely immersed in the task at hand. It is easier to tune out the world when their whole mind is focused on something in the present.
Minimizing Electronic Time
The technological advances that we have today are beneficial, but also wreak havoc on our attention spans. Single-mindedness is necessary for focus. Phones, email, the web, and TV train our brains to process frequent bursts of short-term information rather than focusing on one particular thing.
Specific Methods of Reprogramming Minds
A few ways you can use to train your team to focus despite electronics are to:
Set a specific time to use their phone
Silence their phone or put it on Do Not Disturb when working
Keep devices out of sight and out of reach when they are working
Have them limit YouTube, digital games, TV time, etc. to after your work is finished for the day
Even just these small adjustments can do impressive things to train your team to focus.
Conclusion
It might take some time and effort on their part, but the bottom line is that it is possible to train their brain to improve focus. Making changes to their routine, such as setting aside time to practice focusing or limiting technology usage, can be very effective tools to maximize their efficiency and ability to concentrate.
So those are a couple of simple ways to train your team to focus and get more done and get more satisfaction from their work.
This article takes you through how time-blocking drives high performance and productivity. Time-Blocking is one of the most effective time-management techniques used by peak performers such as Elon Musk, Cal Newport, and Bill Gates. On the other hand, if time isn’t planned well enough, it tends to be wasted or spent ineffectively.
Stay Motivated – Time-Blocking Drives High Performance and Productivity
What happens when we push our brain at work to keep thinking, focusing and creating hour after hour? It shuts down or goes on strike. Your brain says “I’m outa here, buddy.” This is especially true when we keep requiring it to focus on the same task for hours at a time every workday. Studying Neuroscience now reveals to us the benefits of changing tasks regularly. Taking consistent breaks and time-blocking our time keeps our brain more engaged. We are more motivated when we are working so that we actually get more done in less time. That’s how time-blocking drives high performance and productivity.
Productive Powerhouse
So, let’s look closer at how time-blocking drives high performance and productivity.
This is not a new concept. But it’s one we don’t use often enough to maintain our enthusiasm and focus. Nor do we recognize that time-blocking boosts our mental and emotional health. Blocking time is a tool where you schedule your work hours in a way that sets up a dedicated time to a particular task. And then, when that time is up, you switch to a new task.
But you may ask, how time-blocking drives high performance and productivity?
Keeps your brain from getting bored (aka, low motivation)
Improves self-confidence in your ability to succeed
Time-Blocking – Tips to Start Using it Today
So, how should you go about blocking your time? Usually, it’s recommended to work in 2-3 hour work chunks at a time, while allowing a short 5-10 minute break every 30-45 minutes.
Decide how you will block your time. There are many ways to do this, including various apps and email calendars. Google Calendar is a great way to get started because it’s easy to use and readily available.
Choose the date and time for your task. Remember to keep it to 2-3 hours, if possible
Decide where you will complete the task.
Include any details you need to remember before performing the task in the memo area. This will make it faster to get started when you get to that time block. No searching for the sticky note you wrote the directions on.
Set reminders so you know when it’s time to switch tasks. You can get a reminder via email, pop-up or app notifications.
Time-Blocking – Take Charge of Your Workday
Using time blocks you keep your motivation high for all the reasons stated above. Also because you use several of your skill sets each day. It breaks up the monotony of doing the same task all day long for the entire workday.
To effectively manage your energy for high productivity, shift your emphasis to your own needs and investing more in yourself. So you stay motivated and able to perform at a higher level for your employer. You need to recognize energy-depleting behaviors. Then take active steps to change them or delete them completely.
Energy is very important when you’re aiming for high productivity. Look to successful people and ask how they became that way. Invariably, they will always say energy as one of their main drives to success. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main sources in you: your body, emotions, mind, and spirit.
1. Physical Energy for High Productivity
It is no news that improper nutrition, exercise, sleep, and rest affect your energy levels, emotion management and focus. Nonetheless, you may be guilty of ignoring ways to practice healthy behaviors, given all the other demands in your life.
You may be doing things such as skipping breakfast, failing to express appreciation to others, struggling to focus on one thing at a time, or spending too little time on activities that give them a sense of purpose. While it is not surprising that these behaviors are counterproductive, having them all listed in one place can become uncomfortable, sobering, and galvanizing. This may sound harsh, but is actually a necessary first step to restoring your body energy.
The next step is to identify rituals for building and renewing physical energy.
Example of Physical Energy Supporting Productivity
I read about a vice president at Wachovia who was significantly overweight. He ate poorly, lacked a regular exercise routine, worked long hours, and typically slept no more than five or six hours a night.
But, then he began exercising with cardio and strength training. Another practice he also started was to go to bed at a regular time and sleeps longer. Finally the VP changed his meals from two big ones a day to small meals every three hours. The aim was to stabilize glucose levels over the course of the day, avoiding peaks and valleys.
And the result?
The positive result was this vice president lost 50 pounds and his energy levels soared.
Another Physical Energy Practice Supporting High Productivity
Another way to maintain energy is taking brief, regular breaks at specific intervals throughout the workday. We have “Ultradian rhythms” which refers to 90- to 120-minute cycles during which our bodies swing through high and low energy states. At the end of each cycle, the body displays a need of recovery like restlessness, yawning, hunger, and being unfocused. Usually this gets ignored and in turn burns down your energy reservoir faster.
If done properly, intermittent breaks can increase and sustain performance. It is possible to recover well in a short time if it involves a ritual that allows you to separate briefly from work and let your mind rest. You can talk to a colleague about something other than work, listen to music, or walk up and down stairs.
2. Emotional Energy for High Productivity
When you can take more control of your emotions, you can significantly improve the quality of your energy. To do this, you must become aware of how you feel at various points of time and its effect on your effectiveness.
People tend to perform best when they’re feeling positive energy, and won’t perform well when they feel the opposite. Unfortunately, people tend to slip into negative emotions and trigger their fight-or-flight mechanism. Especially when they experience relentless demands and unexpected challenges. The signs may be irritability impatience, anxiety and insecurity. These are big culprits in draining your energy.
One ritual for erasing negative emotions is “buying time.” You can take deep abdominal breaths and exhale slowly for 10 seconds to relax and recover, and defuse your fight-or-flight response.
Expressing appreciation to others is a practice which is as beneficial to both the giver as well as the receiver. It can take the form of a handwritten note, an e-mail, a call, or a conversation. The more detailed and specific the appreciation given, the higher the impact. To achieve higher success at doing this, like any other rituals, set aside some time to do it.
Emotional Energy Practices for High Productivity
Finally, you can change the stories you tell yourself about the events in your life. You may often observe the reverse. People cast themselves in the victim role rather than being thankful of what they have.
This is powerful because you are more aware of the difference between the facts and the way you interpret them. This may seem obvious but you can actually discover that you have a choice about how to view something and recognize how powerfully your story influences your emotions.
To change a perception to a story you want to tell, view it through any of three alternatives, represented by lenses. With the reverse lens, ask yourself what the others involved will say and are they actually true. Use the long lens, look at how it impacts you in the future. Viewing through the wide lens, ask yourself how can you improve and learn from this.
3. Mental Energy for High Productivity
Multitasking, while sounding and looking cool, actually undermines productivity. This is because a temporary shift in attention from one task to another increases the amount of time to finish a task by as much as 25%.You are likelier to be more efficient to fully focus for 90 to 120 minutes, take a true break, and then fully focus on the next activity. This focus and break cycle is called “Ultradian Sprints.”
Once you can see how much you struggle to concentrate, you can combat this by creating rituals to reduce the interruptions that bother you. Start out with an exercise that makes you face the impact of your daily distractions.
Example of Mental Energy for High Productivity
A real-life example is from another vice president at Wachovia, who designed 2 rituals to increase focus. The first one is to leave his desk and go into a conference room whenever he has a task that requires concentration to stop distractions from phone calls.
The result is he finishes reports in a third of the time. The second is by not picking up any phone calls in meetings with the people who report to him. This is because it stretched the time of the meetings and cost his full attention. He now only answers the voice-mail messages in his downtime.
Here’s another method: Instead of replying your emails as soon as they come in, set time to answer them at specific times of the day. This actually can allow you to clear your inbox faster if you fully focus on your emails for 45 minutes at a time.
Another way to mobilize mental energy is to focus systematically on activities that impact you the most in the long term. Identify the most important challenge for the next day and make it their very first priority when you arrive at work in the morning.
4. Take Advantage of Your Belief System Energy for High Productivity
Your vitality or inner force is at its highest when your work and activities are consistent with what you value and have a sense of meaning and purpose. If the work you’re doing really matters to you, you will have more energy, focus, and perseverance.
However, the demands and pace of business don’t leave much space for these issues, And many workers don’t even know that meaning and purpose are potential sources of energy. When you experience the value of the rituals you establish, you can start to see that being attentive to your own needs intensely influences their effectiveness and satisfaction at work.
Give yourself the opportunity to ask questions about what really mattered to you. You will find that these will be both illuminating and energizing. This can be highly important and thoughtful because it will really make you aware of what you want to be really remembered for.
To access the energy of the human spirit clarify priorities and establish rituals in three categories:
Doing what you do best and enjoy most at work;
Consciously allocating time and energy to the areas of your life, like work, family, health, service to others that you deem most important;
And living your core values in your daily behaviors.
Wrap-Up Energy for High Productivity and Performance
Remember, managing your time is not nearly as critical as overseeing the ways you invest your energy for high productivity and personal renewal.
Make 2022 the best year yet with SMARTER goals for you or your team.
Get SMARTER Goals
HR professionals should have an important objective in mind: make 2022 the best year it can be.
It should be simple to do, right? Work teams can meet and brainstorm on various activities for goal setting.
But unfortunately, the amount of effort needed to achieve a goal can be much more than you think. It can feel daunting and even overpowering. Also. teams could instead end up identifying various random objectives. Or worse, with nothing concrete or doable. Or. they may not even be aligned with the company’s vision for the business.
Frankly, to make it your best year possible, it’s not enough to just have a list of any old goals. You need the right objectives, the actions that will get you there, and, most of all, the consistency that forms these actionable steps into habits everyone can follow.
To do all these, you need SMARTER goals.
Why Are SMARTER Goals Important?
SMART, and its more comprehensive variant, SMARTER, are acronyms. You will learn more about what they stand for shortly.
Michael Hyatt, a best-selling author, developed the concept. To what purpose? As a means to make goals a reality by making them into actionable and measurable steps. In other words, a repeatable process. With consistency and practice, you can make these steps into habits.
To understand the importance of SMARTER, you only have to look the number of people who make, but fail to keep New Year’s resolutions. People start off each year brimming with hope and a “can-do” attitude. Here’s the issue, though: by the time February comes around, more than half of them can no longer stick to their list of resolutions and a Franklin Covey survey found only 23% keep their resolutions.
Why?
There are myriad excuses, but they can be summarized into 1 significant reason: They didn’t plan well when it comes to their goals.
Using the SMARTER definition and approach, here are seven goals that may apply to you. They will certainly play a part in making 2022 your great year.
We also provided some SMARTER goals examples to make each point clearer:
Your Career Success through the S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Project
S.M.A.R.T.E.R is an acronym that stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound
Evaluation
Readjust
Your Career Success with Project S.M.A.R.T.E.R.
Here’s a detailed elaboration of this approach and the 7 steps involved:
1. Specific
Your goal should be specific and crystal clear and identify exactly what you want to achieve. You should be able to know what success looks like here. The more specific you can get, the better. A good tip here is to ask yourself the 5 W questions below:
What do I want to accomplish?
Why is this goal important?
Who is involved?
Where is it located?
Which resources or limits are involved?
2. Measurable
Useful goals you set for yourself or your team should be measurable and let you quantify the result. This is so you can track your progress and performance properly. Being able to see progress is a great motivator – it gets you excited knowing that you are on your way to success. Not only that, this helps your focus. Also you want to ensure you are placing your energy behind goals that result in the best returns. To help clarify a goal that is measurable, here is an example:
BAD: I will clean up our candidate database.
GOOD: I will review all the candidates in the file from A to F all next week and discard any that are over 6 months old.
3. Achievable
A successful goals should be one that is realistic and achievable. A goal with no action is wishful thinking. But lying to yourself and aiming for a goal that is beyond your abilities will only result in failure to reach that goal. That being said – this is not an excuse for you to be complacent here. You should set goals that will stretch your abilities but also remain possible for you to achieve.
Also, you should consider factors that will affect the achievability of the goal, like financial and time constraints. A goal example would be:
BAD: I want to be more consistent with recruiting.
GOOD: Spend two hours every morning calling candidates who applied to our Indeed ad.
4. Relevant and Realistic
Your goal should be relevant. It should matter to you, and in line with your priorities and beliefs. And also be aligned with other company goals and vision. This step keeps you from focusing on the wrong things. Many HR professionals fail to achieve their goals because the goals are not consistent with reality. Most HR personnel don’t have a problem setting big goals. Experts recommend making your goals realistic, putting them in writing, and keeping track of your progress.
5. Time-Bound
Every goal you set should have a specific deadline – this gives you something to work towards. However, aiming to hit a goal in 5 to 7 years is not considered a proper deadline. Sure, it contains a time element – but it’s not specific enough.
Your plan to reach a goal in 5 years will be quite different from your plan to reach a goal within 7 years.
Setting a more specific date for your goals allows you to develop a clearer plan to achieve it. This also prevents you from letting other everyday matters take priority over your goals. If you don’t set a deadline for your goals you won’t be able to measure milestones or how close you are to achieving your goal. Look at these examples:
BAD: I am going to rewrite our company Employee Handbook.
GOOD: I will write an updated draft, edit and finalize our Employee Handbook by June 30th.
6. Evaluate
The only way to be better is to learn from past experiences, mistakes, and successes.. Over time, things happen and goals change. Look over your goals from time to time and evaluate them ; check if they need changing to fit your current situation. Constant evaluation of you goals is essential for you to reach your goals. Be sure to congratulate yourself on the small wins. After all, you accomplished them and that should fuel your motivation.
7. Revise
Upon evaluation, if you find that your goals need readjusting, revise them accordingly.
The most important thing to do is to make revisions to your goals where you see opportunities for growth. This will also help you stay focused.
Even if you are confident with how things are going, there’s always room for improvement. Take this opportunity to analyze your performance or that of your team and make changes where needed!
Finally
Stating your goals in the SMARTER way can make them easy to understand. What is measurable can be improved and compared, and the SMARTER methodology helps HR leaders align their critical decisions to the overall company goal.
Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall when you reach for more career growth? Do you think you’ve accomplished everything you’re meant to achieve? Chances are the answer is no. But if you answered yes, then it’s time to change your mindset. Why? Because the most important part of personal development is recognizing that you always have a potential to achieve if you proactively reach for more career growth.
The Growth Mindset
If you don’t believe you constantly have room in your career to grow and develop, then you are the victim of a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset don’t focus on self-improvement. And therefore, unsurprisingly, they don’t tend to succeed as often as those with a growth mindset. According to a number of studies on achievement, training in how to maintain a positive and growth mindset raises individuals’ results, and this is just based on telling someone that having a growth mindset helps!
To achieve and maintain a growth mindset it’s important to recognize that you don’t know everything about your current job. And that you always have room to improve. Even if you believe you’ve mastered your job function, find ways to expand on your knowledge.
The world is always changing so there are always new things to learn no matter what your area may be. For example, if you finished a class mastering a new language, maybe it’s time to take a trip to a country where they speak that language to put yourself to the test!
Reasons to Continue To Grow
While mastering an assignment may seem like a good end of growth goal, its actually better to set a goal to constantly continue to learn. This is because when we believe that we have no more room to grow, we often become complacent and we lose the positive reinforcement associated with continual achievement. Not only that but continuing to reach for more career growth provides us with a healthy dose of self-confidence as we persistently learn new elements of the job.
Constantly setting new or progressive goals keeps us on our toes and takes us out of our comfort zone. It makes us more self-aware. That will help us recognize any additional areas in our job function which could use some improvement. Thinking that you’ve learned everything will only lead to feelings of monotony and boredom. So don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t still have room to grow!
Reach for More Career Growth
If you’ve decided that you want to reap the benefits of a growth mindset, then you’re already halfway to reach for more career growth! Next, look at your job and find areas which you may need to improve. You don’t just have to think of it as improvement. Rather think of it as something you may want to revisit or refresh. For example, if you learned a language fluently in school, maybe it’s time you revisit your knowledge. Try reading a book or watching a tv show in that language. You’ll be surprised by what you can learn!
Besides just deciding what you want to improve upon and how, also make sure you write your goals down. If you write down progressive goals without a clear end in mind (such as “practice Spanish every day”) make sure you provide frequent updates for yourself. Or perhaps list milestones such as “practice Spanish every day for one year” and then after the one year, up it to two years, and so on. This will help you drive and remain on track even when your goals may seem endless.
If you’re constantly in a mindset ready to reach for more career growth, you’ll be surprised by what you discover. And you will also surprised by what you achieve. And pretty soon you’ll find yourself on the road to leading a more successful and fulfilling career.
