It’s just another day at the office. The paperwork is mounting up on your desk. You have 101 emails to reply to. Customers, staff, and clients are banging at your door (literal and otherwise) with requests. You have a to-do list the size of your arm. The jobs you have to do seem never-ending, and you are wondering how you will manage your day while remaining sane. It’s no wonder you are forever counting down the days to the weekend. You need help, and that is where we come in.
Here are some practical tips for bringing order to the chaos of your business day.
- Set yourself daily goals, and prioritise those tasks that need to be completed urgently. Leave those things of less priority to last, or at the very least consider the next point.
- Delegate your tasks. You don’t have to do everything, so if you have staff members with the time and skill to handle some of your workload, then pass it over. Yes, it takes trust, but if you have employed capable people, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about. And if you don’t have the people to delegate to, you should consider…
- Outsourcing work to others, handing over anything that may be too complicated or time-consuming for you to handle. When choosing a company to outsource to, you should read our previous article at www.periu.com/ for some helpful advice.
- Use project management software, something along the lines of that offered by www.sertica.com. To help you handle the logistics involved in running your business, such software could be considered invaluable; a surefire way to bring order to the chaos of your busy schedule.
- Organise your workload the night before. Rather than return to work the next day to face another round of chaos, use the last hour of your working day to process the tasks you have lying ahead of you. Write down a to-do list, leave the essential files and tools you need on your desk, and put your next day’s work into two tidy piles – priority and non-priority. This won’t make your work disappear any quicker, but at least you will have a better mindset when you next sit down at your workstation.
- Declutter your desk. We used the word ‘tidy’ a moment ago, and for very good reason. A tidy space makes for a tidy mind, and it will help you both mentally and physically manage your workload. Neatly stack your paperwork, organise your files on your desktop, and correctly labels drawers and cabinets before tidying the relevant items away into them.
- Use the latest technology. There is an app for everything these days, including the useful software tools listed at www.nerdwallet.com/. Deal with your finances, organise your calendar, manage your team… all with the use of an app. You will wonder how you ever lived without them!
Your day doesn’t have to be chaotic, no matter how many tasks you have to deal with. Follow our tips, and you will bring order to the chaos. Suddenly, coming into work in the morning won’t be as big a challenge as it used to be!