How To Be More Efficient At Work: 8 Easy Practices

Regardless of the specific industry, we all want to know how to be more efficient at work. Let’s look at two hypothetical project manages, and eight lessons we can learn on working more efficiently, saving time and having fewer headaches! Enjoy.

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• Benefits Of Efficiency
• No. 1 – Get Things Into Other People’s Hands
• No. 2 – To Do Lists & Priorities
• No. 3 – Use Rough Drafts
• No. 4 – Streamline Communication, Minimize Small Talk
• No. 5 – Meetings, Agendas & Minutes
• No. 6 – Stay Organized
• No. 7 – Essential Technology
• No. 8 – Keep Your Mind Sharp

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How To Be More Efficient At Work: The Tale Of Two PMs…

“It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times…”

-A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Today, we tell the tale of two project managers. Though both are brave enough to step in the arena, their experiences are very different. One shall be referred to as the Operator, and the other as the Reactor.

The Reactor knows they’re already 10 minutes late; they haven’t left the house yet, papers are still all over the place near their bag and they can’t find their cellphone. They rush to the car, breakfast in hand, praying there’s not too much traffic.

The Operator’s bags are packed and by the door. They’ve been up for an hour, eaten a healthy breakfast and are ready to leave early. They get onto the highway, slightly ahead of the rush, and arrive at the office a few minutes early.

The Reactor’s work day normally begins at 7am. They fly into the parking lot at 7:40am. An accident brought the highway to a standstill. Rushing into their office, the Reactor opens their bag, dumps their papers onto the desk and starts their day head first. They have a couple emails and calls to take care of before the 8am team meeting. 20 minutes! Their phone rings – there’s an issue with a material delivery. “Why now?!”, they ask no one in particular. Barely anything gets done before the team meeting, which runs until 9:30am.

The Operator strolls in around 6:55am. They take their folders out of their bag – neatly labeled and separated. A group text is sent to team members , reminding them of their meeting, top priority items and status updates for the day. They send out follow up emails to chase down open items, make some calls and check the clock. It’s 7:45am – time to print out the agendas, which were sent out yesterday, for the 8am team meeting. Their phone rings – there’s an issue with a material delivery. The Operator knows the field Superintendent is best suited to handle these logistics, so they briefly discuss on the phone.

The Reactor stumbles into the 8am meeting after handling the botched delivery, where team members are making small talk. They’ve had leisurely mornings, replying to miscellaneous emails, waiting to get direction from the team meeting. There’s no time to waste, as several busy projects are in full swing. The Reactor dives right in, going into deep detail on one of the project’s key details. Down the rabbit hole we go, into minute, not entirely important details, for 45 minutes. Team members bounce ideas off each other, but no real consensus is reached. A few advise that they’ll “follow up later” once they look into some concerns. The meeting ends, and everyone goes their separate ways.

The Operator starts by reiterating the group text from an hour ago and elaborates on details. Some team members have questions and concerns, which are dissected and broken into actionable steps. The Operator has delegated taking meeting minutes to the Assistant P.M., which will outline these steps. They move on to the agenda, which was sent out yesterday. Team members have answers prepared for their respective items. The group then speaks about deadlines and the next steps required. One team member speaks up. “If Project A and B have time-sensitive deadlines, should I still do that thing for project C?”. “No, hold off for now, we’ll regroup at the next meeting on that.”, says the Operator. The Assistant PM notes this in the minutes, which are sent out 10 minutes after the meeting is over.

The Reactor gets back to their office. They finish making their follow up calls and respond to emails. It’s already 11am! They need to write an important letter to their Client that’s due tomorrow. They’ve written some, but need to finish it today. The letter then needs to be reviewed by the team, to which they’ll add several key pieces of information. The letter needs to then go to the Boss for feedback, so it can get revised and sent in tomorrow. **Knock knock**. It’s the Boss – there’s an unavoidable change of plans. They need that letter out by the end of the day! “You’ve been working on this for a couple days, so it’s almost done by now, right?”, jokes the Boss. “I thought I had all day to finish this and get info from the team, plus some time tomorrow to put it together…”, the Reactor thinks. The team is already working on critical tasks for Project A and B based on the meeting, they won’t have time to do both. The Reactor scrambles to catch up with the team.

The Operator gets back to their office. As part of the team meeting, the group reviewed the Operator’s rough draft of the big Client letter. The team is working on their parts now, which they’ll have done this morning – they know this is top priority. They will then move on to other assigned portions of Projects A and B in the afternoon. **Knock knock**. It’s the Boss – change of plans. They need that letter out by the end of the day! “No problem”, replies the Operator. Once they get information from the team, the Operator will plug it in to the letter, finish their own parts, and send it to the Boss for review. The Operator sends a group text to the team, letting them know that the Boss is looking for that letter info. ASAP.

The Reactor must think quickly. Each team member owes a specific piece of information to complete the Client letter. The Reactor knows that the Boss needs this letter within a couple of hours, so they go to each of the team members’ offices:

• One team member has headed to lunch already. They owe some financial information to the Reactor. They’ll be back in 45 minutes.
• Another team member hasn’t started. “I’ve been working on project C for the past couple of hours, I’ll start on this now”, they reply.
• The third team member needs to provide some technical data to the Reactor for the Client letter. “I thought you only needed a couple of metrics for this letter, not all of this!”, they reply. “This will take me several hours.”

The Operator receives the information from the team, and plugs it into rough draft letter. 30 minutes of adding some final touches, and off to the Boss it goes! The Operator sends a calendar appointment via Outlook to the Boss, requesting they review the letter at 2:30pm. The Operator then sits down to have a healthy lunch brought from home.

The Reactor scrambles to put this letter together. They know other parts of project A and B will now be put off, so the team can help finish the letter. Tomorrow will be crammed now. “No time for lunch”, they think. They grab a bag of chips from the supply closet and continue working.

The Operator gets some other work done on their to do lists. The Boss confirms the 2:30pm review. The Operator crosses off a couple of their own items and heads over to meet with the Boss. The other team members have begun clicking away on project A and B tasks that were discussed earlier.

The Reactor gets a call from the Boss. “What’s the status of the Client letter? When will you be ready to review?”, they ask. “I’ll get it to you within the next hour or so”, they reply. The Reactor begins to chase down the team for their missing parts. Two team members get their info done by 230pm, but the third is still collecting information. The Reactor plugs in whatever info they can, sends the mostly-finished letter to the Boss around 3pm, then heads to the Boss’s office to review.

The Boss asks the Operator to make some changes to the letter. They will take about an hour or so to make. The Operator heads back to their office to make changes. They see some emails coming in from team members about projects A and B as they complete the tasks reviewed earlier. The Operator is copied on some emails for reference only – team members are taking care of the work they’re in charge of. They make changes to the letter, sign it, and email it to the Client. The Operator then replies to some team members about project A, submits a document for project B, and updates their to do list. They leave on time – ahead of the traffic – and make it home. They even made a couple of follow up calls on the road. The next day is outlined already, so the Operator shifts out of work mode for the evening. Down goes the bag and on silent goes the phone. They’ll have the next several hours for personal time and to get a restful sleep.

The Reactor sits down with the Boss. “Team member ________ is still working on their part, but here’s what we have so far”. The Boss critiques some of what’s written, and changes need to be made. The letter was put together in a rushed manner, and it shows. The Reactor has a couple of hours of work to revise the letter, plus they still need the technical data from their teammate. The tech info finally arrives – at 4:30pm. The Reactor puts together the letter and sends it to the Client by 5:45pm. They then check their emails – only a couple of other things got done that day for Projects A and B, and there are lots of emails between teammates asking questions. Chaos fills the air and deadlines are looming. The Reactor then heads home, but first sits in a little traffic. Exhausted, they put down their bag and have a small amount of time to take care of all personal matters and prepare for the next day. They get to bed an hour later than the Operator, with less quality time at home.

The cycle continues…

How To Be More Efficient At Work: The Benefits

From our hypothetical example, I’m guessing you know which profile you’d rather be!

The story clearly shows which performance is superior. Need even more convincing? Check out this list of workplace productivity statistics that may surprise you! In addition to most adults spending nearly one hour DAILY on Facebook every work day, here are a few reasons why we can all benefit from being more efficient at work, according to our example:

• We rely on others for best performance.
• High priority items get the attention. When we know what needs to be done and which is most important, things fall into place.
• Time isn’t wasted on silliness.
• Teams can put their heads together and achieve big results.
• There’s less confusion and back-and-forth.
• There are less surprises and more gets accomplished.
• There’s room for surprises when they do happen.
• An organized mind is a calm mind.
• Tools of technology make coordination and communication easy.
• Our work hours are better used, and shorter!

How To Be More Efficient At Work: Eight Easy Tips For Big Results!

Now that we’ve grimaced at the fate of the “Reactor” above, we can breathe a sigh of relief. There’s hope!

While some people are naturally task-masters, being efficient is very much a learned skill. One does not simply begin as a great chef, whipping up several appetizers, an entree and a dessert without a learned set of skills. The chef approaches each dish based on ingredients required, prep time, cooking method and priority! The same goes for managing time.

If you’re wondering how to be more efficient at work, here are 8 simple, high bang-for-the-buck techniques you can use to work more efficiently TODAY! Let’s get started.

1. Get Things Into Other People’s Hands…First!

As the saying goes, two sets of hands are usually better than one. This counts big time in project management. We are all on teams and rely on each other to maximize our total output every day. This means teammates’ productivity is just as important, if not MORE SO, than our own.

As Project Managers, we are responsible for making sure everything gets done. Said another way, we’re in charge of making sure everyone gets done everything they need to.

A seasoned project manager knows how to be more efficient at work. This is why a successful PM spends their time on other people first, before they get going on their own work.

Here are a few things you can do to get all the horses matching each other’s cadence:

• Schedule meetings early in the morning.
• Spend your first hour of the day following up on items that are due, or will be due soon.
• Make calls or reach out to subcontractors, vendors, etc. during the first half for your day (before lunch).
• Let people know that you’re available to discuss in detail as needed, and expect that at least an hour of your day will be spent on unknowns.

2.Use To-Do Lists & Prioritize

Do you hate wasting time? I sure do. There’s nothing worse than having a plan, and getting completely sidetracked for the day on something forgotten or a sudden surprise. As a matter of fact, one source states that nearly HALF of all to-do list items are never done!

If you checked out that article, you’ll notice that to-do lists can be an enemy as much as they can be a friend. Having a massive list of things to do can be overwhelming, and cause undue stress when a list of incomplete tasks is constantly in our face.

This is why we must keep every task on a to do list. Wondering how to be more efficient at work and take your to do list further? Learn to prioritize. For this, I recommend you use an Eisenhower decision matrix:

This breaks tasks down into four categories so you can decide which to address first. In chronological order, you tackle each item as follows:

• Urgent & Important – Do These Yourself, Now
• Urgent But Not Important – Delegate To Someone, Now
• Not Urgent But Important – Set A Date On The Calendar
• Not Urgent, Not Important – Set A Date Later, Or Drop It Completely

This will help you realize just what is REALLY important, and what can be set aside for now.

3. Use Rough Drafts

There is a concept out there called the Pareto principle. This basically states that 80% of results will come from 20% of actions. The flip side is also true – the remaining 20% of results will come from 80% of actions.

This basically means that most results in any business or project will come from only 20% of what is actually being done. What does that make you realize? For me, it makes me think that I need to know what that 20% is, and that it gets done as efficiently as possible!

I’ve noticed that the same is true for things I work on and the time I’ve spent. Let’s look at the letter example from our story. A rough draft of a letter is basically an outline. The topics of the letter are briefly mentioned at the beginning of the letter, while each paragraph goes into greater detail.

A rough draft can be nothing more than a bullet list like the one below:

• Paragraph 1
  • Subject of the letter
  • What you need, what you offer, etc – “mission statement”
  • Brief list of key points of the letter (let’s say, two)
• Paragraph 2
  • Recap key point 1
  • Support info:
    • Key point 1a
    • Key point 1b
    • Key point 1c
    • Key point 1 reference i.e. chart, data, figures, etc.
• Paragraph 3
  • Recap key point 2
  • Support info:
    • Key point 2a
    • Key point 2b
    • Key point 2c
    • Key point 2 reference i.e. chart, data, figures, etc.
• Paragraph 4
  • Recap key points
  • Closing statements

How does this relate to the Pareto principle? Say this letter takes three hours to write in total. That’s 180 minutes to be 100% done.

The outline above? That’s about 80% of a letter once completed. Sure, some data may need to be collected, and some word-smithing needs to be done to make everything flow, but the ‘meat’ of the topic at hand is there now, and we only need to fill in the rest.

I’m willing to bet that an outline like the one above will take less than 40 minutes to write out. How did I get this figure?

180 minutes total x 20% = 36 minutes.

In the example above, several teammates and the Boss need to contribute to completing this letter in some way. Why write out a practically-complete letter to show them? That’s a time killer! For 36 minutes of your time, you can draft a letter like this one and send it to others for them to review. This works for more than letters, too – templates, forms, concepts, contracts, etc.

If they have major changes or comments, you didn’t spend all that ~80% of time finishing it unnecessarily. If you’re wondering how to be more efficient at work and also get input from your team, drafts are key.

Lesson? Use rough drafts and the Pareto principle to save a $^!t ton of time!

4. Streamline Communication & Minimize ‘Small Talk’

People spend way too much time on emails and useless communication. On average, office works spend over two hours a day on email-related activity. That’s almost 30%! Would you like a good chunk of that 30% back for you and for your team? We all do.

This goes double for what I refer to as “email text strings”, where people chit chat back and forth via email with others copied. There’s practically no chance that everyone can read every email in real time to keep up with this. Crazy amounts of emailing either:

• Wastes productive time in sheer volume of back-and-forth
• Confuses people on topics of actual importance.

Fortunately, this is an easy fix – it just takes discipline. Here are some ideas:

• For logistics and quick status updates – use a group text thread. That way people can quickly be on the same page as one another, but no topics of real depth or importance are being discussed.
• Check your email on scheduled intervals only.
• Close your office door if need be to stay focused and avoid intrusions.
• Set aside time to meet with team members for one-on-one items i.e. “office hours” that a professor has.
• Send group emails for announcements or recaps. That way the information being exchanged is for information, not for feedback.
• Schedule a time and place for discussions and questions, which leads us to…

5. Have Regularly Scheduled Meetings, And Use Agendas

If you just got a shiver at the suggestion of a meeting, you aren’t alone. Turns out, there are many statistics surrounding meetings that might surprise you. While we know meetings are necessary, they need to be done RIGHT to be super effective. Here are a few highlights from this article that are worth noting:

• Agendas are proven to shorten meetings by nearly 80% of time...
  • Think of agendas, meetings and minutes as a heart rate or breathing pattern; it follows the same cadence every time, and everyone can plan around them in anticipation.
• Only about 1/3rd of meetings utilize agendas!
• Billions of dollars are wasted each year on useless meetings.
• Most meetings last 30-60 minutes.
• Around 4 hours are spent per week preparing for meetings.
• Somewhere between 75%-90% of people multi-task in meetings. And we all know what happens when we multi-task. Nothing is getting 100% done.
• Let’s say this statistic one more time:

“Agendas are proven to shorten meetings by nearly 80% of time...”

-Did you know that agendas are proven to shorten meetings by nearly 80%?

If you’re wondering how to be more efficient at work and keep everybody productive, make sure you utilize agendas for every single meeting. This allows people to prepare, to unite ideas, to anticipate, and to bring important questions to the table.

Last but not least, consider this quote:

“If you don’t have meeting minutes, you didn’t have a meeting”

-Someone who didn’t waste time in meetings

6. Stay Organized

This one is simple. Keep yourself organized. Here are a few ways:

• Have a list of every single thing you have on your plate.
• Review this list constantly.
• Prioritize them using the Eisenhower matrix example above.
• Create a to do list just for the day. This includes 2-3 big items, and several small items. Keep this in your sight all the time.
• Carry manila folders and separate them by subcategories.
• Remember the K.I.S.S. rule? Yep.
• Keep all your notes in one place. I suggest a 6-in. x 8-in. binded notebook.
• Systematize information:
  • Take notes in a certain format.
  • Standardize how your computer documents are organized.
  • Collect data through apps or software, and run reports routinely.
  • Write meeting agendas and minutes in a certain format.

7. The Power Of Technology

In 2019, what’s considered simple for most people is still high tech, since nearly all of us use a computer or smart phone regularly. Even at basic offices, we only need a couple of tools that are free or very cheap with a base level computer, phone and internet connection. Here are a few ways we can leverage the power of technology as the force multiplier it is:

• Use email to share updates and recaps, and “cc” every party who requires this information.
• Use the Calendar feature of your phone/email to schedule meetings. This is great because you can invite as many people as needed at once, and they’ll each see who else is invited too.
• Use group texts to quickly update people on trivial stuff.
• Take pictures and send them through text/email. “A picture is worth 1,000 words”, after all.
• Go paperless – scan copies of documents, save them on the computer as PDF files and recycle the hard copy. Your work space and attention span will thank you. But don’t do this unless you also have…
• Cloud-based storage – services like DropBox, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft OneDrive allow you to virtually save your documents in a cloud storage file rather than on your physical computer. They also facilitate easy file sharing and group folders, so small groups on the move can stay in touch remotely.
• Use PDF Editing Software to mark up, edit and even sign PDF documents. Remember when you needed to print something out, write on it with a pen, scan it to yourself as a new PDF and then save/send that document to people? Not necessary with PDF editors!
• Use group conference call services to have virtual meetings. Eliminating the need to travel physical space is a huge time saver, and you can have literally hundreds of people all over the world on the same call! If you DO need to travel…
• Use the power of Bluetooth to make hands-free calls while on the road. Living and working in the Northeast USA means I’ve spent a LOT of time in traffic. Luckily, using modern phone technology, I’ve had conference calls, caught up with team members and had personal conversations all while waiting for the tiny light up ahead to turn green.

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PROMOTED

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8. Keep Your Mind Sharp

If you’re doing step 1 through 7, you’ll be an organized, lean-and-mean project managing machine (heh). This last part is really about you. That’s right, your mind and body.

This means taking care of yourself, both during and after work. We’ve actually covered this topic in greater detail – check out this article titled “How To Relax After Work: 10 Easy Ways“. Don’t have time? Here are a few stats for you.

• 40 million adults in the USA have anxiety.
• The average American spends 4 hours per DAY on their smartphone.
• 50% of that time is on social media!
• 85% of people worldwide don’t exercise enough.
• Laughing for just 15 minutes per day burns calories, boosts our immune system and supports heart health.
• Anxiety is highly influenced by improper (lack of) breathing.
• 85% of our brain is water, and most of us don’t drink enough.
• Sleep is insanely important. 7+ hours per night. Go to bed and wake up at the same time 7 days per week.

There you have it! Hopefully this article has been informative, helpful and you’ve had some epiphamies about saving time. Now go tear it up!