I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that the faster I work, the more I’ll get done. It's a perfectly fair assumption, no?
It’s no secret here in the office that I’m a million miles an hour. But after I read about time-blocking, I set myself the task of slowing down and focusing more attention to the task in hand. Of course, this sounds simple - and a little too obvious. But days get messy, unexpected things happen and phone-calls and emails pop up throughout the day. It's definitely easy to stray.
What I have found is that by blocking out time, turning off notifications and plugging my headphones into a calming playlist, I feel mentally sharper and more prepared to focus.
And turns out by 'hyper-focusing' and even spending more time on one task at a time, I’m overall more productive.
Since Equinet recently rolled out the use of Everhour, a time management system that allows us to track the efficiency and profitability of the company, it’s given the whole team greater visibility into where and how their day-to-day time is generally spent.
One thing I’ve noticed is that when by blocking out a set amount of time to complete a task and focus on that one task, I can generally complete it to a higher standard. However, when I’m grappling with multiple tasks at once, not only is it harder to focus, but I end up spending longer on that original task. Who’d have thought?
Ok, I know it sounds pretty obvious, but for me, it was the wake-up call I needed to shake up my approach to my daily workload.
How do you approach your day? Have you ever considered, or experimented with time-blocking?
Do you have a list of priorities or goals that you want to achieve this year? And do you struggle with allocating time to them? I’m no different. Life can be messy. Most of us juggle a lot of different things at the same time. Even though the simple solution is to stop juggling, it’s not always realistic. Or even needed. What if you could do more things without losing your time? It’s possible. But you must work in an organized way.
