Some of us may believe there’s not enough time in the day, but oftentimes, it’s not about time but the management of it. Workers are often overwhelmed with tasks that they feel like they can’t complete efficiently, and they are often seeking ways to be more productive and cut down the stress. Well, try this strategy:
1. Check with purpose. Checking email every 10 minutes is a compulsion for some people; they have to look every time a new email notification pops up. But it’s murder on concentration. It’s important to keep tabs on email throughout the day, but you should control when it happens.
Cut back and only check four or five times a day at specific times when you know there are lulls in your workflow (after a meeting, after a break, when you return from lunch, etc.). Turn off notifications on your devices and only dive into email at unscheduled times when you need to retrieve something specific, like a file you received.
Remember, if someone is emailing you, it’s probably not an emergency. And if you want to decrease the amount of junk you receive, unsubscribe from those senders; they’re a distraction.
The same goes for social networks. There are some jobs that require people to check Facebook and monitor their Twitter feed constantly, but responding to every notification won’t let you get anything done. Turn those off when you need to focus on a task and only check in to see the viral video your buddy posted when you come up for air. Also use a tool like HootSuite to sort and filter the riffraff out of your social media feeds.