Amid your entrepreneurial work days, do you ever wonder how you can stay focused, use your time more efficiently, and see each project through to completion? It’s a common challenge that working professionals face, and have been facing for decades. Depending on the type of person you are, what kind of habits you have, and what industry you’re in, the solutions will be different. However, all the approaches for staying on task have a few things in common. Most of the techniques are simple strategies or hacks that can change the way you view your job. Here are four suggestions that can help you get the most out of the limited time you have, reduce the overall stress level, and get you home before the sun goes down.
Make Weekly Time Budgets
Most professionals have lots of recurring tasks in their work weeks. Whether those repeated calendar items are Monday meetings, Tuesday conferences, Wednesday presentations, or something else, you can simplify your schedule by coming up with a weekly time template of sorts. Sometimes called time budgets, these weekly rosters of hour-by-hour breakdowns for each workday give you a clear view of what’s coming up. Don’t worry if you have large blocks of unlabeled time for various days. Just create the template as best you can, filling in the recurring pieces of the schedule.
Avoid In-Person Time-Wasting
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Avoid the Multitasking Myth
Multitasking was a buzzword that got media attention during the past two decades. The problem is that it sounded great but didn’t work for most professionals, many of whom do their best work when they focus on just one project until its complete. Of course, the demands of life often force us to multitask, but that’s not what the buzzword referred to. The myth of doing nine things at once, on purpose, and maintaining a high level of job quality just didn’t pan out. Try doing one thing at a time until you’re through. That method worked for more than a century and still gets results today.
Two Breaks with a Short Lunch
In the 2020’s, more people than ever are working from home, running their own companies, and operating service-oriented businesses as solo owners. Others use a home-based office as telecommuters who work for corporations in hundreds of different capacities. For many, the unsupervised eight-hour day is a new creature, and it’s hard to stay on schedule. One trick that many former office inhabitants use is the 2-break, short-lunch rule. It’s possible to begin at 8 a.m. and finish by 5 p.m. if you take two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch.
