Follow these tips and make your day–to–day operations run smoothly.
Post-mortems
Much of our work is repetitive. Post–mortems will spare you having to re–invent the wheel each time. Upon completing a project, think over what you learned and how you could make it easier the next time.
Meetings
Rather than listening to everyone complain about meetings, enlist their help in improving them! At the end of each meeting, discuss what was good and bad about the meeting and how future meetings can be improved.
Use your planner
Jot down tasks and reminders in your planner (be it electronic or paper) to "empty your head." Then, when you sit down to plan, schedule these actions into open time slots. You'll prevent many crises by planning ahead.
Appointments
If someone repeatedly cancels appointments at the last minute, try to avoid dealing with that person. Unless they're crucially important, drop them. If it's a client, ask yourself if your time wouldn't be better spent courting new clients. (Even if it's your biggest client this is still worth considering.)
If you meet with people outside your office, leave if they keep you waiting more than 10 minutes. A less drastic approach is to meet them in your office instead of off–site, so if you're kept waiting you can work while you wait. Better yet, see how many of your meetings can be held on the phone instead of in person.
Private work sessions
Schedule chunks of time to tackle work that requires concentration. Treat it like a real appointment—if anyone wants to schedule something for that time, say politely "I'm already booked, sorry." During your work session, let voice mail pick up your calls.
Alarms
If you're afraid you'll forget that 2:00 p.m. phone call, set an alarm in your computer. This frees up your mental energy.
Telephone
Leave your voice mail or answering machine on, then return calls all in a row. Use a headset or speaker phone so you can move about your office and multi–task.
Put specific subject headers in all the email you send; when recipients reply your header will carry over. The result: your archived emails will have useful, specific subject lines such as "Agenda for April 3 staff meeting" and "Question about Smith account" rather than vague, useless headers such as "Agenda" and "Question."
Do it now
Whenever possible, dispatch routine tasks and requests immediately. Anything that'll take two minutes, do it right then.
Completions
Avoid the temptation to shift from one half–finished task to another. Try to complete things before moving on to the next task.
Make notes
When quitting for the day, jot a few notes about where you left off and what your next step is. This will make it easier to get your momentum back quickly at the next work session.
