Article: Starting 2016 efficiently and productively: 4 simple steps

Performance Management

Starting 2016 efficiently and productively: 4 simple steps

The New Year often brings with itself a host of resolutions, a majority of which are proven impossible to keep. The ones about your health will probably last a week, and the ones made for making more time for yourself will probably take a month to fizzle out in face of deadlines.
Starting 2016 efficiently and productively: 4 simple steps

How is it that year after year, we vow to manage our time, schedule and self to maximise our efficiency and productivity, yet struggle to keep the word? Have you, or your team-mates also made record-shattering promises to yourself, and want to excel this year? Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” Let’s use this wisdom, and make the right beginning, to set the base for success all around the year. Here are the first two, of the four, steps you need to undertake to work better in 2016:

Rearrange and Purfe

Rearrange and Purge:

No matter how hard you argue that creative juices flow in chaos, it is a well-known fact that a clean and lined up work spaces not only make resources handy and accessible, but help increase productivity. A few researches also show that your seniors and colleagues form unshakable opinions about you and your quality of work, depending on how you manage your desks. So, trash the countless copies of the resume you made in 2012, which are still sitting in your drawer, and while you are at it also the receipts of the last pizza party. Once you have removed the clutter, rethink about how effective the current setting is. If you think changing the position of the chair, the laptop, or the stationary might help, do that! Just because you were told to set up things that way, or because that’s how everyone else does it, doesn’t mean you should stick to it. Make it work for you! After you have rearranged, and begin to settle in, clip the extra dangling wires, put the stationary in the pen-stand and make room for everything that didn’t get trashed. After all, what is the point of having a stapler and post-its, if you can’t find them when you need them the most!

Renovate Desk Space

Renovate Desk Space:

You’ve cleaned your working area of the distractions and rearranged, but special attention is needed to make your desk more efficient. Begin by arranging everything in a manner that doesn’t require you performing stretching exercises every time you need to grab a pen. The stuff that is used everyday can make its way on the desk, and everything else can be moved in the drawer. And in order to maintain this habit of keeping your desk space tidy and manageable, create a system that labels documents/emails that are needed immediately, in the near future, in the distant future or are redundant. That way you can save a lot of time sifting through the same pile of documents, every time you need something important. Lastly, to ensure that redundant and useless documents do not get accumulated overtime, mark everything with an expiry date. You may use filters in your email inbox, or page-flags to label files and folders. Every document that is past its expiry date needs to be deleted/discarded, or removed from your immediate working space. 

Such simple steps and creating systems can infuse fresh life in the way you work, and how you achieve goals. Watch out for the next, and last, two steps you need to do, to begin the year on a great note!

Read Starting 2016 efficiently and productively: 4 simple steps - Part 2

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Topics: Performance Management, #Blog

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