It seems that a to-do list is synonymous with being a good worker, but the tables are turning lately and what is most valued in new companies are workers capable of being very productive in a short time. An improvement in productivity can even reduce working hours and facilitate reconciliation.
In addition, the fact of being at work warming up the chair does not mean that we are going to achieve better work results. What’s more, there is nothing that is as far from reality as it is stated: in our workday we only reach our peak of maximum concentration for six hours a week, not even a day.
This is the conclusion of the study carried out by David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work. This sharp contrast with the widely accepted 40-hour work week, which makes it almost impossible to reconcile in many aspects of daily life and work.
The reasoning behind this conclusion is that when a hard-working person stops doing things that took up time, but without results, they end up having a greater ability to concentrate to complete other tasks thanks to the feeling of tranquility of not having a saturated schedule.
According to the text published by Kate Norrup in the Harvard Business Review, there is no magic formula to improve our productivity, but there are tips that help us identify what we should not do during our workday or when making decisions about our agendas. and our pending tasks. An exercise of your own creation improves decision making on the to-do list and this method can be applied to work as well as personal or home life.
How to improve productivity and lighten the task list
The first step is to draw a line to divide a piece of paper in two and decide which aspect of life we want to improve in terms of results and stress. On the left side, we list the tasks or activities that we carry out in this aspect of our life: for example, at work, answering emails, having meetings, calling clients, writing reports…
On the right side, we’ll list our best results: closing a major deal, improved sales, a good result… This procedure, says Norrup, can be somewhat difficult, as we culturally suffer from certain blocks to the time to self-recognize merits and victories.
To finish, you have to join a line that connects each work success with the tasks that will help us achieve that result. For example, the calls and meetings with the closing of a pact or a commercial agreement. Once this step is finished, we will see those tasks that have been left without associated results.
This will make us see that there are tasks on which we have been wasting time that are, so to speak, useless and, therefore, we should stop doing or minimize the time we dedicate to it if it is not possible to eliminate this task from our list.
Following this procedure will help us to identify failures in our work routines and will allow us to optimize our work day much more, helping us to focus on the truly important tasks to achieve the results that we want and that interest us.
