How To Manage Your Workflow

Many people were brought up to believe that hard work would always get them ahead every time without fail. However the truth is that if you do not manage your workflow there is a likelihood that your hard work will end up killing you and I mean that literally as well.


You may even have heard people whining about how the harder they work the more behind they get. The reality is that modern living has way too many interruptions that are fairly new. The cell phone for instance. Or the email notification that loudly announces any email that lands in your inbox. Then there is working at home which is rapidly gaining in popularity. All pretty cool stuff perhaps but certainly un-cool when it comes to managing your workflow. As much as we appreciate all these novelties of modern living that make life so much more convenient, the truth is that they come at a much higher price than most folks realize. For instance they have introduced a whole new load of complications and interruptions that are certain to considerably slow down the workflow of even the most efficient.


How about some powerful ideas and techniques to help you manage your workflow better? So that you work smarter and get a lot more done in half the time.


Interruptions Are Killers



Never kid yourself that you will be able to manage your workflow without getting rid of interruptions. It will never happen. And so you will need to be very ruthless about clamping down on any and all interruptions to your all important workflow. How ruthless should you be? I hear you asking. Well how about ensuring clients do not call you during the day with the only exception being scheduled calls or emergencies? Now most folks may not agree with such a seemingly radical step but just stop, take a deep breath and think about it for a moment. You are in the middle of something that seems to be going quite well and suddenly the almighty client calls. All your attention and train of thought has to shift to them. And even long after you hang up chances are that you will be still thinking about the call. You can guess what amount of good that will do to the task that was interrupted. Multiply that just by a few times during your work day and you have a disaster of monumental magnitude in the making. And the real reason why you are always swamped in work that you never seem to get done.


It is true that there are those of your clients who may want to strongly resist the very idea of not being able to call you when they feel like it. But let’s face it, if you are already drowning in work what is the point of keeping and gaining new clients when you are destined to always deliver shoddy work spiced by constant interruptions?


Bulking Tasks Is A Greater Time Saver Than You Realize



You must have heard it said so many times before that you are on the verge of getting sick reading it here yet again. But hold on a sec before you skip this entire paragraph. You getting sick all over your desk will not change the fact that grouping similar tasks together and getting them all done at the same time will revolutionize your workflow.


Schedule all your email responses for a certain time of the day. Then do the same with your phone calls, routine tasks, meetings and everything else that you need to do that can be categorized and then step back and see for yourself the huge difference that it will always make.


So what happens to your great multi-tasking skills that you have always prided yourself for? Actually multi-tasking has always been overrated. It may actually work quite well for a mother taking care of a bunch of rowdy kids in the house. But it certainly doesn’t fly when you want to find focus and build routine into your workflow.


Delegate, But Do It Only To The Highly Skilled



Reality checks are inevitable in this life. That is as long as you remain human. We have to admit that everybody ends up with those tasks on their to-do list that they absolutely dread or abhor. Stuff that they will always keep putting off or skirting around. These are also the tasks that you may not be particularly good at. This is where you need to delegate. Delegation will introduce the new headache of supervision which can prove to be a nightmare to some. So do yourself a favor and minimize supervision by hiring and delegating only to the highly skilled and nobody else. You can then use the considerable time saved to do more of what you enjoy doing and are most effective at. This in turn will increase efficiency so much so that you should have no problem raising the extra revenue required to pay the extra hands.


You Must Carefully Prioritize Your To-Do List



A key part of prioritizing the tasks on your list for the day is to recognize the fact that there are certain items you cannot embark on until you have completed others first. Randomness in reducing the pile on your desk can be a great time waster and will just end up making your workload even more overwhelming. Before you tie your shoe laces you need to put on your shoes first. Tie your shoe laces first and you will need to untie them later so that you can put on your shoes first. Essentially this means that you will tie your shoe laces twice instead of once. That’s how frustration and time wasting dominates your workload.


Break Up That Giant Into Smaller More Manageable Parts



It is impossible to master something massive and vague. But break it all down to tiny manageable parts and you will be utterly amazed at how quickly and efficiently the massive pile disappears. This is a very important part of managing your workload so that you can focus on the details of each component, one at a time, and get it done well, every time.


Conclusion



Managing and building routine into your workflow for greater efficiency is not so difficult. Once you purpose to do it and really set your mind to it, you will find that you have made great strides within a very short period of time.

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