Business Practice: How to Accomplish More in Less Time?

Wasting time is no longer a luxury that most businesses or managers can afford. If you are constantly feeling pressured for more time for your projects or meetings or even down time; you may want to keep track of how your time is being spent and revamp some of your processes or try some new ones. You may also want to look at changing some of your beliefs and attitudes also; as sometimes we need to change our outlook to bring on a new improved and more efficient way of thinking. This especially applies in the category of "because it has always been done this way" thinking.

One of the best efficiency training lessons is to keep a journal of what you do, when and how you do it, who is involved, the time it takes. This can be done on a daily, weekly and monthly or annual basis. Then only you can assess whether the task or event is really producing the results you need or it needs to be changed. You can always ask someone that gives good advice or that you respect if they can help you. Just have all of your data ready so whatever they come up with will work for you and is not just another one size fits all program or process.

It is true that most of us at work and in our personal lives have started overly multi-tasking to a fault. It really pays to check out when you really are just doing 5 or more things all at once poorly or could you just take care of 3 of those things completely without having to lose your concentration or your human relationships in the process. Some of our worst phone, texts, and emails are when we are just trying to "get by, because we are hurried" and we suffer in the long run, but not in the short run. Even eating on the run has it's long term consequences, it is just a good efficiency strategy to look at your own "brainless" list of multi tasks and rank them so you know you are not suffering quality verses quantity.

It is true that the time honored quote of "a job done right the first time is a job done right" is still a great piece of advice. We can end up with a lot of loss ends by trying to burn ourselves out at both ends of the candle.