The new year can be a professionally rewarding time if you follow a few productivity tips for 2017. These are changes in philosophy, rather than instant coffee type solutions. All require you to spend a few minutes reflecting on how you spend your time and what else you would get done if you had more productive time at work.
The exercise represents time well spent because while most of us are good at making to-do lists, we’re not so good at adjusting things when overwhelmed by other tasks.
Consider these steps as you look to improve your productivity in 2017:
What’s Your Top Five?
What are the five things that are your top priorities? Identify the tasks that are most important to your job and your business.
You may be temped to say that everything is important. Resist that urge. Your time should not be an all you can eat buffet of tasks.
Some have to look at their job descriptions to remember these duties. This isn’t the employee’s fault. They’ve been overwhelmed with changing priorities or emergencies that required their attention.
Your top five tasks should be the things you spend most of your time performing. Some feel they should make up 80% of your day.
While that’s a good number to aim for, it’s more important to ask yourself, “Does this task fall in my top five?” so you can make adjustments to your day. More on this later in this article.
What Held Back Your Productivity?
Think about those times when you ended the day and felt like you’d made no progress toward your big picture goals. Try to identify what kept you from focusing on your top five tasks and if there’s a way to minimize its impact.
We’ve talked before about ways you can control interruptions at work and sometimes this process can be as simple as closing your door, turning off your phone’s ringer, or not responding immediately to low priority email.
Often, you’re doing something innocent, like turning a quick cup of coffee into a long discussion with colleagues about the past weekend’s sports. While I’m not saying that you should avoid talking to coworkers, you should monitor how much time it consumes.
By knowing where you lost time, you can start to control these distractions. You’re taking the mystery out of your day.
What Can You Delegate?
Even the most effective people can find themselves doing tasks that contribute little to their productivity. Often, these are things that you used to do or know best how to do. Despite your knowledge and skill, you need to let someone else do those things, especially if you’re not paid to do them.
You should provide support and guidance with the expectation that you’re going to stop performing the task.
Another one of our productivity tips for 2017 will have you consider whether you choose to do these old assignments because they provide you an excuse for not focusing on your new and potentially challenging duties. It can be a common stall tactic, allowing you to avoid the uncomfortable.
While trying new things can be scary, it’s more frightening to realize that you’re delaying the work for which you will be ultimately judged.
Delegation can also give another employee a chance to develop new skills, which in turn, increases their value to the organization.
Final Thought: Productivity Tips for 2017
It is possible to make the new year a more successful one with these productivity tips for 2017. The key is committing to evaluating where you are, why you’re there, and how you can become more strategic with your time.
