5 essential rules for working quickly and efficiently

Being efficient and being busy are very different, even if most people tend to confuse the two. It's not about being restless, making noise, stirring things up and creating a fuss in the corridors or sitting at your desk; it's rather about mastering your "quiet strength", to use a well-known old presidential slogan.

Learning to get to the point is easy.

Here are some classic tips to keep in mind.

Read also: Know your values and be efficient with Feel Good

1. One focus, one action

Don't get distracted. Refocus, "pull yourself together". Absolutely avoid doing several things at the same time. It is necessary that your mind goes in one direction to avoid the polluting stress of scattering. Performance is also, and above all, the ability to find your priority and to tackle it, concentrating all your physical, mental and intellectual power.
Tiring your brain because you're working hard, yes. Exhausting it because you're not channeling your activity, no. So start by taking a few minutes to define two lists: the list of major, essential, unavoidable tasks, and the list of intermediate tasks. (There is also the list of unnecessary tasks that will waste your time in vain. Not to be done. To be forgotten. Although a default list, it also has its importance, don't forget it!)

2. A break, some distance

Remember to stop regularly for a few moments. This will give you a more general and broader, more accurate overview of the action you are pursuing. Solutions emerge more quickly when you take a step back. This will also allow you to rest your mind and avoid it working in slow motion after a few hours.

3. A watch, deadlines

Allow yourself precise time margins, set limits, deadlines. This will prevent you from getting lost along the way and wasting precious energy. It will also make you work faster, with the necessary "pressure" to avoid slacking off along the way. It has been proven that when a task is timed, you progress faster.

4. Sorting, from the most complex to the simplest

Within this priority list that you have created, it is good to always start your work with "THE" tedious task, the one you dream of seeing disappear and which you have been postponing for days.
The less you want to do it, the faster you should do it, in short. So organize your schedule according to a rule that goes from the most laborious to the most pleasant to accomplish.
And if, by chance, you were having a day where all your activities were pleasant, start your work with the tedious task you had planned for another day! This primary and daily constraint will allow you to gain your freedom of mind, insofar as you will remove from your professional thoughts the "negative tasks" that hampered your mind.

5. A habit, a zen attitude

Everyone knows it: it is a thousand times easier to do a job that you have already done twenty times than to do it for the first time, whatever the task in question. So establish a regularity for each action that you will be required to repeat and transform it into a habit. Into zen.


The ReKrute.com Team