Today I want to share with you the single thing I do that has the biggest impact on my work efficiency. This may not be the best tip for you, it may not even work for you, but this is what I have found to be the biggest determination of whether or not I feel efficient and productive at work. The best part is, it’s pretty simple, all you have to do is plan.

What I mean by plan is that I have found that when I come into work with a plan for what I want to accomplish that day, I find that I am dramatically more efficient then if I don’t have a plan. For me, planning simply means looking at my task list at the end of the day before, or my calendar, and seeing whats coming up, then picking one or two large items that I want to knock out the next day, knowing that when I come in in the morning, those are going to be my focus. It sounds incredibly simple, but for some reason I find that this has a dramatic impact on my productivity.

The most interesting part about this to me, is that even on days when I don’t necessarily follow my plan, i.e. something comes up in the morning and I have to spend all day dealing with it, if I came into the day with a plan, I am still more efficient then if I didn’t. I think it all ties back to mindset. Coming to work with a plan for what you are going to work on, even if you don’t wind up working on it, puts you in the work mindset from the very beginning. If you don’t have a plan for the day, its easy to get caught up in distractions and generally not be as productive as you could be simply because you never got fully into your work mindset.

I encourage you all to try it out for a week. Start on Monday by figuring out either Friday afternoon or Sunday evening what you plan to work on on Monday, and come in Monday morning ready to get it done. Then keep it up for the rest of the week figuring out the day before what you will work on the next morning; finally, come back next week and leave your comments about whether or not you found that this helped your productivity.  I am interested to see if other people see the dramatic difference I did…

I’m a big keyboard shortcut fan.  I am a touch typist, and therefore can key in pretty quickly what I want to do.  By using keyboard shortcuts, I can keep my hands here rather than moving over to a mouse to do the same thing, distracting me from what I’m working on.

Here are some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts:

If you’re a mouser rather than a keyboarder, you may not agree that this method is any faster than using your mouse; however, if you are a touch typist, I encourage you to try some of these and see if your speed doesn’t increase…

How’d you do?  Let me know!

The web is a wonderful tool.  It provides us with useful information (as well as whimsical, amusing, and outright weird).  One of the best ‘inventions’ in recent years is information aggregator sites.  The most common aggregators are those that will search for a string and show websites that may be related.  There are several websites out there that will do this; I’m a fan of Google, but know others who are fans of other aggregators.  Aggregators are also industry-specific – the most common/well-known ones are probably travel sites.

Oftentimes, in the not-so-distant past, when a traveler wanted to find out the rates for a car, hotel, or airline, they would visit each site (or call a travel agent).  Now, most travelers will visit a site like kayak, expedia, travelocity, hotwire, Priceline, etc. to shop for several fares simultaneously – and will book through these sites, or may do additional research based on the results.

What other aggregator sites are you a fan of?

In our last post, we talked about doing tasks right away rather than adding them to the to-do list for later.  Here’s a corollary:  keep a scratch pad next to the phone or computer to jot things down quickly.  If you keep your to-do list on the computer, you can sometimes minimize the window or task pane, and jot it down on that list as easily; but if you don’t, it’s sometimes helpful to jot things down to remember later.

If I’m writing an article for a magazine, I may want to remember to include an anecdote.  Rather than write a formal outline of the article, I’ll simply jot down “include story about xyz” to ensure that I don’t forget to include later on.  Is this something that needs to go on my to-do list?  Probably not, since I’m in the midst of writing now (although “write article by next Tues” may be on my list, subtopics under it most likely are not).  By use of this throw-away technique, you can ensure you are making the case in point while not cluttering up a more formal memory jogger instrument like a to-do list.

Makes sense?  What are your thoughts?

A perusal through time management books, efficiency books, etc. will show you the importance of to-do lists.  To-do lists definitely have their place – it’s one of the ways that we make sure that we don’t forget to do important (and not-so-important) things.  However, look at how long you are taking to work on your to-do list for the coming week or day – could you spend 30-50% more time, and actually DO the task?

Let me give you an example:  I remember that I need to set up a doctor’s appointment for Monday.  You can either write down “Call Dr for appt” or you can pick up the phone and actually make the appt.  [Of course, this presumes that you are writing this during business hours.]   It may take you 10 seconds to jot it down, or 2 mins to complete the call; however, there’s one less thing for you to do.

Try keeping your to-do lists for things that take 5 minutes or more – and take care of the smaller things as you think of them.  We’ve implemented this methodology in our staff meetings, and so end up with a shorter list of actionable, but longer implementation time, items rather than a long laundry list of things that will take 2-3 mins to do each.  It’s improved our internal system considerably; give it a try and let us know how they work for you!

I’m doing a lot of travel right now, and keep noticing simple efficiencies that could make everyone’s life easier – not from the airlines’ standpoint, but from the traveler/passenger standpoint.
Here’s a couple of things I’ve noticed:
• Folks exiting security screening stop in a tight area, like a narrow aisle, to put on their shoes. Suggestion: move 2-3 feet further along, where you’re not blocking everyone behind you, and put your togs on then. Or slide over to the wall so that we can get by you.
• Ditto for adjusting your luggage, purse, camera, briefcase, etc. on the jetway. Move along into the terminal, THEN stop to position everything just so (or move aside to do this rather than right in the middle of the aisle).
• Understand the rules – overhead is SHARED SPACE. This means your newspaper, hat (yes, I’m talkin’ to you, Tex), purse, or other small item should be stowed under the seat rather than expecting everyone else to instinctively know that your hat needs 12.8” of space so the crown doesn’t get creased, or that your purse may have a mirror in it that could get broken, or that you’ll want that newspaper once we take off, so nothing should be put on top of it…. You are also more than welcome to leave it home, stow it in the seatback in front of you, or hold it on your lap. Really, we won’t mind.
• The airline is not nursery school. Your child who doesn’t know what “inside voice” means is NOT cute as he yells his observations loud enough to wake the dead (yes, Sammy, this is you). We all don’t care that the wheels on the bus go round and round, all the livelong day, nor do we want to hear this sung over and over AND OVER. This is what they invented coloring books, connect the dots, and portable DVD’s with earphones, and children’s Benedryl for. I’m not talking about crying infants here – I’m talking about 3 and 4 year olds who need to learn that they are not the center of EVERYONE’S universe, even if they ARE the center of yours.  And 3-4 hours on a plane is a REALLY long time for us to put up with your child’s antics.

OK, reading this list over, I realize I’ve morphed from ‘efficiency tips’ to ‘pet peeves’. Maybe it IS time to get off the road for a while… 

Ever wonder how Netflix can process so many movies, correctly, so often?  See this post for one answer… pretty sweet.

When I first started traveling for business, a good friend of mine took me aside and gave me three valuable pieces of advice:

1)  Plan downtime into every trip.  Don’t schedule every minute of the trip with meetings, meals, and entertainment; allow yourself some alone time (to soak in a tub, read a book, call the family, explore the local area, etc.)

2)  Be healthy on the road.  Don’t use a business expense account as an excuse to eat too much, drink too much, and exercise too little.  Exercise after work and before dinner – every night.

3)  Plan for the worst, and hope for the best.  This involved losing things (rental car keys, airline tickets (back when we still had paper tickets), and hotel room keys) – so he developed, and shared with me, his system:

a)  Have a place in your briefcase or purse where these 3 things go – and put them there every time.  For him, it’s an outside flap on his briefcase while on the road, and the bedside table in the hotel room.  For me, it’s a specific location in my purse, whether in the hotel or on the road.

The benefits to this?  In case of an emergency, you can grab these things and be out of the hotel in less than 10 seconds – with a way to get home, get back in, or drive away.

In 15 years of travel, I’ve only had to evacuate 3 times – but all 3 times I was outside with my purse, keys, phone, etc. while others around me were wondering how to get back into their room, angry that they forgot their car keys, or worried that their wallet was still in the room.

b)  Always leave an itinerary, with hotel phone numbers, office numbers, etc. with someone ‘back at the ranch’ so that they can get in contact with you if you lose your cell phone or are out of service.

Stay tuned for Part 2 –

Here’s an interesting post by my friend Cristina Favreau – we had the opportunity to visit in person recently when I was in Montreal, and I find this topic to be a bit fascinating, as I’ve used this technique many times without really considering it time management – which just shows that we can ALL learn something, no matter how skilled we are, in our passion/field!

http://blog.cristinafavreau.com/2009/12/time-management-while-you-sleep/

If you suffer from overwhelm, procrastination, too many to-do’s and not enough time, then you’ve come to the right place. Here, on the Efficiency Dr. blog, my staff, respected contributors, and I will be providing tips and tools for managing your time and tasks. We’ll share our personal stories (anonymously if they are particularly embarrassing) of times when even our own best laid plans have gone astray, and what we could have done to stay on track.

Encarta’s definition of efficiency (as it relates to our purpose):

1. competence – The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort

2. productive use of resources – the degree to which something is done well or without wasted energy

Being efficient is not about multi-tasking! Research has shown that trying to do multiple things at once is not as effective as focusing on one task at a time.

We can define efficiency more loosely as feeling good about your work and the time it takes you to do it. As human beings; we’re not going to achieve the efficiency level of a machine, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t improve. Essentially this is the purpose of the Efficiency Dr Blog, to provide you with information and techniques (prescriptions, if you will) that will enable you to perform your tasks, work, or projects with satisfaction, and without wasted effort.

So, if you are ready to get more done with less effort, sign up to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and remember to think positive. If there’s a will, there’s a way! Not every method will work for everyone, which is why we will be bringing new ideas to the discussion each week. We are confident that if you struggle with time, at least a few of the ideas we share will work for you!