Being productive and busy are different things. How can we stop that feeling of ‘fire fighting’ and become more pro-active, but actually less busy? Well, we’ve put together a few suggestions to take away some of the pain of busyness, or indeed, business. This is just the beginning and you’ll find that some of these things work for you and some don’t.

Keep a tidy workspace

I think this is key to a successful and productive work environment. I’d say if you’re going to only do one of these things, do this. Being surrounded by reminders of things you haven’t done yet is enough to give anyone work-related anxiety! This is one of the positives that came out of GDPR for me – clean desk policies. There’s no more paper hanging around, scraps of note with things on that you need to do that just get buried under the next one. Take a look at your desk right now, is there anything there that’s irritating you? Spend the first 10 minutes of every day getting things in place, and the last 10 minutes of the day just squaring things away.

Similarly, if you’re not office based, but spend your time on the road, or out in a van – keep a tidy vehicle. Try to get into the habit of washing the van regularly and not putting things all over the dashboard. This tidy environment really promotes a tidy mind and pride in what you’re doing. After all, you spend so much time at work, you need to be able to enjoy being there.

Plan ahead

There are lots of ways of doing this, so I’ll just make a few suggestions. A boss of mine once tried to force me in to doing things his way and it had the absolute opposite effect on me. Organisation is so personal, if you get it wrong it can completely throw you off-course and cause you even more headaches. So, bosses, please trust your staff to organise as works for them!

Use an online calendar

There are lots of different calendars you could use, I tend to like using my Outlook calendar because I have my emails open constantly and it can sychronise with my phone, I can share calendars with other people and it sends me reminders. Using a calendar, I will itemise my tasks and fill them in date by date, so that I know sometimes weeks in advance what I’m doing on a particular day. This saves me a huge amount of time in the mornings, because I don’t spend time every day working out where I got to.

Collaborate with a cloud-based platform

Instead of emailing people constantly, why not migrate over to a cloud-based platform like Teams, Asana, Slack or Workplace. These dedicated task management suites tend to be free for small teams or charge per user. These platforms are great and we do use them here at TradePages – we can assign tasks & easily discuss topics without keeping track of emails.

Take a break

Not working is just as important as working. You need to make sure you’re having a break from what you’re working on, stay hydrated and it’ll help keep your mind working well. We’ve all been in a situation where you’re working so hard on a project and end up really struggling to make progress, despite the hours you’re spending on it, but take a 10 minute break and you can come back to it with a much clearer head and usually solve the problem a lot quicker. I’m very guilty of this one unfortunately!

Don’t Panic!

If you’ve got a big project on, split it into smaller chunks and set yourself much smaller goals. If we think of things in their entirety, we’ll just freeze at the sheer scale of a task ahead of us, but by taking things step by step, it helps to make that journey easier for us. Yes, we know there will be challenges ahead, but don’t unduly worry about those until you get to them. By working a process through, you may already have resolved any issues already, or you may have a deeper understanding of the project you’re working on and be able to come up with a solution easier. Of course, be aware of the project as a whole and plan ahead (as above), but whilst you’re working on each task, give each bit your full attention and you won’t be overwhelmed. It’s amazing the mountains you can climb if you just take each step in turn.

Let us know how you get on and what worked for you. Or, do you have a sure-fire way of staying one step ahead? We’d love to hear and share it!