Quick Steps Toward Working More Efficiently in 2008
December 3rd, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 9 CommentsTweet This
With a new year almost upon us and resolutions soon to be made, it’s a good time to take steps to become better organized and make better use of your time. While there are a lot of ways to approach doing so, some have quicker, more dependable payoffs than others. In this post, I’ll round up several ways you can win back some time each day without going out on a limb.
Become more efficient at e-mail. The ePolicy Institute has found that the average worker spends one hour and forty-seven minutes on e-mail every day. It’s a huge time sink, and many web workers probably spend more time than that in their mail clients. By getting more proficient with e-mail and picking up tips, you can save lots of time. Let’s look at some easy ways to do this.
If you use Outlook all day, as I do, this blog has done quite a bit of coverage on how to get more out of it and work faster. There are also many useful add-ons for Outlook and extensions for all kinds of e-mail clients.
If you use Gmail and Google Calendar all day, make intelligent use of filters, pick up some essential tips, and remember to follow sound e-mail practices. Also, if you’re not using the GMail Mobile Client which puts your mail and more right on your cell phone, do so.
Use To-Do List Managers. Zoho Planner, Ta-Da Lists and RememberTheMilk are all good, free online applications that can keep you much more organized. With these applications, the key is to get used to the algorithm of using them all the time. Once you do so, they will help you avoid letting things fall through the cracks.
Schedule More Meetings Online. Many of the free online meeting applications are now very good, and save you from the time sink of schlepping around to physical meetings. In many cases, they are also useful for sharing your desktop with colleagues online, and even for remote control of your system if you’re, say, traveling. Check out our recent roundup of choices.
Remember, the key to getting big benefits from these efficiency-boosting tools is to spend a little time with them, in the interest of following best practices. If you have any free time over the holidays, perhaps schedule a little time for learning in. It’s a good investment.
Do you have any good tips on how to work more efficiently?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
This saving time on e-mail thing is getting old. Just accept that it is part of the job and try to do it efficiently. There is another article posted here about the myths of internet. One of the myths of e-mail is that it takes so much time. Then stop using it and go back to sending around paper memo’s. Preferably by visiting each and every person you send the memo to fact to face. See how much faster that is in comparison to e-mail.
Thanks for the Gmail tips, I’ve just followed your instructions, and emptied/cleaned about half my mailbox!!!
Nice article with some great links/tips. I’m looking through the gmail links now.
Gmail now has color codes for the labels you can use. These are great for marking “TO-DO” emails or “LOGIN INFO” emails. I’ve lost a lot of emails with cpanel login information that clients sent me and had to ask for it again and feel like crap.
Mike
In reply to Brendan’s comment:
I agree that email is just a part of the job, and that its MUCH faster then memos. But whats wrong with trying to improve the best? Email is best (for a lot of things) that doesn’t mean that it is perfect. There is ALWAYS room to improve on everything.
If we improve on things then employers just tack on more stuff to track how much improvement was made and it slows the process down again. It’s a vicious retarded circle.
This is nice article though. I’m using iGoogle Todo, It simple yet powerful!
How about MORE MONEY FOR LESS WORK? That would “get things done” for me.