Displaying All Posts tagged with time management

Monotasking: Focus on One Thing at a Time

No matter how much you have piled up on your desk, and regardless of how bad-ass a multitasker you are, you can only do one thing at a time. Remembering this is one sure-fire way to increase your productivity, ease your mental load and knock things off your to-do list with efficiency. Click Here to Read Article …

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Productive Working Hours: What Are Your Best Work Times?

Although most offices operate on 9 to 5 (or 8 to 6) working hours, not all workers work best on this timetable. Night owl workers prefer to burn the midnight oil, working late into the night when there are no distracting coworkers and their brain is at its sharpest.

I, on the other hand, prefer to follow regular business hours (roughly 9-6), so I’m available for dinner or drinks when my cubicle-dwelling friends get out of work. Plus, I like that feeling of accomplishment when the clock strikes noon and I can strike a bunch of items from my to-do list and break for lunch. When I’m still tethered to my computer at 7 or 8 at night, I feel antsy and unproductive (though I’ll do it if that’s what it takes to meet a deadline).

What about your working hours? What are your best work times? Why? Click Here to Read Article …

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Productivity Web Apps Bundle on the Cheap

The popular lifehacking site, the aptly-named Lifehacker, delivered some fantastic news today that we just had to share!

The website AppSumo is offering a bundle of the professional level of web-based productivity apps such as Evernote, Remember The Milk and RescueTime (the last of which was used to calculate the lost time during Google’s Pac-Man logo day)  The package is just $55, which is pretty much the most awesome savings I’ve ever seen on a bundle of pure productivity apps.  The best part: they’re not platform-dependent so they’ll work on any OS of your choosing.  The not-so-best part: they’re only available at this price for a limited time and also for a limited duration (ranging from 2 months to 1 year before you have to pony up more dough).

Even with that caveat, the value of this package is well over $300 – a great deal no matter how you look at it.  So if you’re wanting to upgrade to the premium version from the “freemium” version of any of these apps –  or just want to give something new a try, this bundle is the perfect excuse/reason to do so.

Grab Premium Versions of Your Favorite Productivity Webapps for Cheap with AppSumo (via Lifehacker) Click Here to Read Article …

Why You Shouldn’t Underpromise and Overdeliver

“Underpromise and overdeliver.”

Have you ever heard this brief bit of business philosophy at work? It has to do with consciously managing the expectations of your clients and customers. The idea is that you set a comfortable scope and timeline for your service, and then “wow” them by delivering the results ahead of time and under budget.

The question is: Is it a good way to build relationships with your customers?

While the short-term results of “underpromising and overdelivering” look great, your clients might come to always expect super-fast, super-cheap work from you. Suddenly, the whole “managing expectations” idea backfires completely; your client has learned to set them very high, and raise them each time you exceed your own self-set expectations.  You’re caught up in a mess that you created.

It’s not such a good idea to underpromise, overpromise, or – perhaps – make promises at all. To use another common work expression; maybe “honesty is the best policy.”

What do you think? Click Here to Read Article …

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Finalizing Your Fridays

Finalizing Your Fridays

The week is coming to a close…only a few hours left.  You’re either madly rushing to get the things done you set out to do this week, or are in the midst of planning what you’d like to accomplish next week.  (Or perhaps you’re doing both.)

Not everyone finishes up their work week on a Friday, but a lot of people do.  Well, in theory they do.  They do in that they leave what’s left from the past week and slide it over to the next.  And the next.  And so on.

How many things are left as “open loops” on your to-do list when Friday draws to a close?  How many tasks are left unassigned?  Are you leaving this week with a sense of completion and ready to go into the next week with a fresh set of goals and accomplishments to achieve?

Do you “finalize” your Fridays? Click Here to Read Article …

Time-Saving Tips for Life Stuff

From reading the posts and comments throughout WorkAwesome, it seems that a common complaint of many of the writers and readers is a lack of time. Hopefully this is because you are too busy with work and raking in the financial benefits that come with this.  Perhaps you’ve got a busy life – and you can use some tips to save time doing the things you don’t enjoy, so you can spend more time doing the things you’d rather be doing.  Or, maybe you really enjoy your World of Warcraft – but your spouse would rather you do a few things before you go dragon hunting.

So – here are a few ways to save time in your day. Click Here to Read Article …

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How to Find More Hours in the Day

We’ve all wished for more than 24 hours in a day, but short of developing the powers to bend the laws of space and time, that’s not going to happen. But one thing we can do is bend the ways we use the hours at our disposal. If you look hard enough, you can discover time you didn’t know you had. Click Here to Read Article …

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Keeping Track of Your Tech Devices

Yesterday I realized that I had 5 portable devices to recharge and a drawer of tangled cables from which to get each of the 5 recharge cables (each device has its own).  My TV remote and cordless phone seemed to need new batteries and the hand held vacuum was out of charge, too.  It took me a good half hour to get everything all set and plugged in, by which time the cables were starting to tangle again.  It’s like I was having a close encounter with clutter of a third kind – a technological kind.

How does everyone handle their technology maintenance?  Do you have a routine?  Have you found a way to keep devices, cables and batteries organized without spending too much time on it? Click Here to Read Article …