Posts Tagged ‘efficiency’

With the constant increase in technology, completing your work each day has gotten more difficult. There are so many methods of communication, and the fact that they blend between work and personal life makes it difficult to know what to focus on. And with our current financial crisis, being a productive and efficient worker is now more important than ever. Below are 3 very simple ways to improve your efficiency at work and increase your productivity.

1. Turn off your communication devices-This means closing email, chat programs, skype, and any other application of way that people can contact you. If you must use them for business then set allocated times to use them, and only use them during those times. Constant interruptions distract you from your work and causes your brain to lose track of your task. It takes time for you to get back into the task and this wastes time.

2. Use the 80/20 rule- It is very likely that 20% of the tasks you do will make up for 80% of your results. If your job consists of 10 various tasks, find the 2 that you absolutely have to do to get results. Focus on doing those things very well. Then start finding what tasks from that 10 that don’t really matter and eliminate, reduce, or delegate.

3. Batch Your work- Do like processes together. If you have to make a bunch of phone calls throughout the day, it is much better to do them all at one time. You will be able to get into a rhythm and not only will you be more efficient you will also make better phone calls. Multitasking has been pushed for quite a while, but it isn’t efficient and it creates a lot of wasted time going back and forth between different projects.

Related articles on time management:

• 3 Steps to Stop Procrastination
• Time Management- Because there is More to Life Than Work
• Affordable Education and Learning new Skills

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With all the options to connect to people, save links and blogs, read articles, store data, search for information, and do just about anything else on the computer, it is all starting to seem a bit overwhelming. Too many ways to access data means too much time on the computer and lack of efficiency.

To be honest, I love technology and am usually one of the first to try something new. Lately though, the options have become too numerous and it is hard to keep track. It is no longer just finding something that is better and using it. Programs and applications on the web (especially networking sites) change with fads. A good example is Myspace and Facebook. Myspace was one of the largest networking sites growing at an amazing rate, and then it stopped being popular. It is true that it wasn’t really that well designed, but more than that it just wasn’t “cool” anymore. People started switching to facebook.

On one hand all the options are good. It means that you can communicate he way you like. The bad part is it means that you will spend more time on the computer and internet keeping track of your contact and making sure that you are using the same applications and sites as your friends. It takes time to get design your site the way you like it and build up your fiends, and then when a new site starts you have to do it all over again. Then there are others like LinkedIn or Plaxo. No one wants to keep 3 or 4 address books, but that’s exactly what we are doing.

Then there are all of the websites that allow you to track and share links make various functions easier. These would include Evernote, Del.icio.us, twitter, Stumble, and Digg. You can see a full list at Go2Web20.net.

Having to many options makes the web and the computer much less efficient. People are building a lot of niche applications that have a purpose, but aren’t important enough to fuinction alone. So many of them become popular and then fade away.

I think what we should work towards for what everyone is calling web 3.0 is consolidation and simplicity. Less signing up and more efficiency.