Business News

GUEST BLOG: Five top tips to make the most of your day

By Business & Finance
10 September 2014
productivity
By Karen Lawlor, country manager for Ireland at Regus.

The internet is full of articles telling us how we can all improve our productivity. But what really works? Here are five suggestions that I think make the biggest difference.

1. Write a to-don’t list (and a to-do list)

If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you’ll find it only too easy to work out what you need to do every day. (Whether you’ve got the time to do it is a different question entirely.) But not so many of us are aware of the things we do that destroy our productivity.

So when I write my to-do list at the beginning of every week, I also write a to-don’t list, which reminds me what I shouldn’t be focusing too much of my time on – like social media, or letting my emails take control of me. (It might not sound serious, but I assure you it is – and it really helps.)

2. Set your own priorities

We all know what’s really urgent on our to-do list and what’s a deadline that someone in the office has created to suit them. But you still need to decide which order to do the tasks in. I like to get started with the big things straight away and deal with the little things later, but other people can spend the first hour of the day dealing with small tasks to get themselves into the right frame of mind for the big things.  (It’s entirely up to you: there’s never a right way or a wrong way to do these things, but you need to find your own way, and stick to it.)

3. Eat the elephant in chunks

I find that slicing tasks up into smaller and more manageable chunks means I always feel like I’m getting somewhere. (If you use the Agile project management approach, you’ll be more familiar with the idea of scrums and sprints than chunks, but it amounts to the same thing.) This way, the task seems less intimidating, you can see that you’re making progress, and you can quickly change your approach if you need to.

4. Divide up your time

Some of us can concentrate for longer than others, but no one can concentrate constantly all day on a single project without breaks. We need to divide up our time as well as our tasks in order to stay focused and productive. I use 25-minute segments with a five-minute pause. (The Italians call this the ‘Pomodoro’ approach, because you slice up time like you would slice up a tomato.)

5. Use your ‘A’ time well (and your ‘B’ time too)

Everyone has certain times of day when they’re naturally more productive or creative. As you might have guessed, with me, it’s first thing in the morning, so I always try to use that time to do tasks that require a lot of thought. Similarly, I’m at my least creative after lunch, so I use that time for admin and clearing my inbox.

You’ll instinctively know what your own best times of day are, but you need to make sure the people you work with know them too, so that they can leave you to get on with things.

All these techniques have helped me stay productive.

About the blogger

Karen LawlorKaren Lawlor is the country manager for Ireland at the global workplace company Regus. Lawlor is responsible for managing the complete Irish business; a portfolio of five business centres and a team of over 25.

Regus has a network of more than 1,800 business centres in 100 countries. There are four Regus centres in Dublin and one in Cork. Founded in Brussels, Belgium, in 1989, Regus is based in Luxembourg and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

You can connect with Karen on LinkedIn

Or visit the Regus website.