A good work routine helps you eliminate distractions and accomplish more while maintaining your efficiency. Top performers can do an impressive amount of work and achieve incredible results by structuring their schedules strategically. By practising habits that help maintain work efficiency, these top performers also maintain a healthy work-life balance.
In this article, we provide a guide to establish work routines and a few tips that can help you maintain a high level of productivity.
What is a work routine?
To Establish work routines is a series of planned activities you complete throughout your day to help you stay focused. A good routine helps you adhere to your schedule, even as unpredictable circumstances arise. To create a routine that feels empowering and lets you perform at your best, you must understand yourself well and match your planned activities with your energy levels and capacity to concentrate.
The first thing to keep in mind about designing your routine is that it takes time and practice to develop. You’re likely to go through this process several times before you get into a routine that boosts your productivity. Follow these steps to get started:
1. Pay attention to how you feel
Create a workflow that helps you perform your best work by matching tasks with your mood and level of motivation. For many people, mornings are the right time to do the concentration-intensive work, while afternoons can be better for meetings, brainstorming and collaborative work. Spend a few days paying attention to how easy and enjoyable you find working at different times in the day.
2. Make your morning effortless
By creating a simple set of morning habits, you help yourself establish a reliable starting point each new day. Your sleep quality improves if you fall asleep and wake up at the same time. With better quality sleep, you may be able to wake up rested and ready for the day. Following a morning routine also helps you get through the morning without having to think deeply.
By having a set sequence of tasks like making the bed, preparing breakfast and doing light exercise, you can get ready for your workday without making these small, individual decisions. Once this sequence becomes a habit, it can get you from being sleepy in bed to a state of alert motivation with little effort.
3. Set priorities for the day
Staying productive while you have a lot on your to-do list can be challenging. To avoid being distracted by everything you want to do, learn to set priorities for the day. Identify the top three most important tasks, then schedule enough time to accomplish them.
Make sure to include a little extra time so that you can do your tasks at a reasonable pace. Once you’ve set a schedule for accomplishing your top three tasks, you can easily see how much time you have for everything else. You may have less time than you imagine, which is why it’s important to adjust your work routine. By setting priorities and concentrating on your most important work first, you can enjoy fewer distractions.
4. Try to accomplish challenging tasks
Now that you’ve set your top three tasks for the day, the next step is to complete one with your full attention. By getting an important task done early, you give yourself the motivation to keep working. You may experience a sense of accomplishment, which actively helps your mood and trains your brain to be more motivated. Not only can this put you in a good mood at the moment, but it can also help you be happier at work over the long term.
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5. Take scheduled breaks
After completing a task, it can be helpful to give yourself a short break before starting the next one. Your attention and ability to concentrate is finite. Though you feel motivated now, exhausting yourself before noon can make it challenging to maximise your productivity throughout the full day.
Note that the breaks you take are more beneficial if they’re active. Get up, walk around, breathe some fresh air or do some light exercise and stretching. Mild exercise also releases brain chemicals that help you feel motivated and happy.
6. Constrain vague tasks
While you can create a detailed plan for your day, something outside of your control is likely to come up. Often, these impromptu tasks can take a moment to understand and begin. A reliable way to make sure these tasks align with your plans is to put a specific time limit on them.
When a task or discussion comes up, set a specific timeframe to devote to it, and make all participants aware of the constraint. Simply tracking the time you spend on a task can help you stay on task and meet your goals for the day.
7. Plan the time you stop working
Putting time constraints on your work day is a great way to manage your overall work commitment. If you find yourself idly scrolling through email messages after work or at the weekend, you might be impacting your productivity during your actual work time. Being constantly connected to work can make it challenging to define boundaries between work, home and leisure. Keeping these aspects of your life separate can help you be more present during each one.
Setting limits on your availability outside of work hours can help you establish boundaries. Likewise, muting notifications when you leave work helps too. While at work, try to be present, focusing on the tasks you need to complete. Remind yourself that being mindful of your current tasks can help you get work done in a more timely and effective manner, helping you enjoy your free time after work.
One of the most effective tools for managing your time and combatting the temptation to procrastinate is to create a daily schedule. When managing a busy work schedule alongside personal commitments and a desire to make time for ourselves, it can be difficult to get everything done. Creating a daily schedule can help alleviate some stressors from your day-to-day work. In this article, we explain the benefits of a daily schedule, how you can create one of your own and provide tips to make it easier to stick with long-term to make managing your life a lot easier.
What is a daily schedule?
A daily schedule is a way of methodically planning the events of your day. It allows you to list intended times that events take place and serves as a reminder of tasks that need completing. You can use it professionally to organise meetings, projects and work-related tasks or to keep track of your personal commitments such as meeting friends or family events. You may also choose to create a schedule that maps out your daily routine, from your meals to your exercise regime. Regardless of your needs, you can format a schedule that works for you.
What are the benefits of creating a daily schedule?
Creating a schedule for your day has a range of benefits, as it can help you use your time more efficiently. Learning to stick to your schedule consistently can also improve your time-management and organisational skills, allowing you to plan and prioritise more effectively. Here are some other ways that creating a daily schedule can help you:
Stay focused: having clearly defined tasks, times and deadlines can help you avoid distractions and limit procrastination.
Understand your capabilities: it’s often easy to take on too much. Being aware of all the commitments you’ve already made can allow you to set more realistic goals for new tasks.
Maintain a work-life balance: becoming more efficient at managing your time and organising your work tasks can free up space for more personal activities, whether that be time with friends and family or rest and relaxation.
How to create a daily schedule
If you want to create your own schedule to help boost your daily productivity levels, follow these steps:
1. Make a list
Start by writing down a list of the tasks you like to complete within a typical week. Include both personal activities and professional objectives, but at this stage, focus on getting it all on paper without worrying about the structure. Make a note of everything you want to accomplish during an average day, from making your breakfast to your daily work tasks. Ensure you also include tasks you complete periodically, such as taking the bins out, changing your bedsheets or cleaning the bathroom.
2. Categorise your tasks
Once you’ve identified all of your weekly tasks, you can then categorise them. Separate your professional needs, such as responding to emails and attending meetings, from your necessary home life tasks, such as cooking food and doing laundry. When you’ve established what needs to be done, you can then determine your personal wants, such as attending a yoga class or meeting a friend for coffee. At this stage, it’s useful to highlight each category of tasks in a different colour to help visually organise your task list.
3. Think about frequency
Next, identify how often you perform each task and mark the frequency next to the task. For example, next to daily tasks such as making breakfast write the number ‘7’ and with less frequent tasks such as doing the weekly food shopping, write the number ‘1’. This can help make things easier when transferring your tasks into a planner, weekly chart or digital calendar.
4. Group similar tasks
Group similar tasks together to make more efficient use of your time. Consider which tasks require similar resources or take place in the same location. It can be useful to carry these tasks out one after the other. Organising related tasks in this way allows you to concentrate on one task at a time while also increasing productivity.
5. Prioritise important tasks
If you’ve identified several large tasks that need completing throughout the week, think about which ones have the highest priority. Try to limit the number of large tasks in your schedule to three per day to avoid overloading yourself. Think about what you can realistically complete within the time you have so that when you tick them off your list, you can feel a sense of accomplishment at having completed what you set out to achieve.
6. Transfer your tasks into your schedule
You can now begin transferring your tasks into your schedule. There are multiple methods to plan your schedule, so think about what works best for you. You may choose to record your schedule virtually, using either a calendar program or a scheduling app so that you can access your schedule across multiple devices. Or you might prefer to write your schedule in a planner, as writing tasks down in this method may be better for some people. You might even choose to do both. It’s about what best suits your needs.
Tips to help you stick to your schedule
When first implementing your schedule, it can take some time to adjust to having an organised routine. If following a system or structure doesn’t come naturally to you, it can be tempting to fall back into old habits. Here are some tips to make sticking to your schedule easier and to help it become a habit:
a. Complete challenging tasks first
People tend to avoid their larger, more challenging tasks and instead focus on whatever is easier or more enjoyable first. This can often lead to procrastination and ultimately reduce the time you dedicate to big, daunting tasks. Reduce the risk of missing deadlines or the last-minute rush to complete cumbersome assignments by tackling them first. Then enjoy the gratification of a job well done and the freedom to complete the lighter tasks in your schedule.
b. Don't multi-task
When preparing your schedule, try to avoid overlapping tasks that require completion. While the ability to multi-task can be beneficial, it can hinder your focus and make managing your time more difficult. Instead, alleviate the pressure by giving yourself ample time to complete each task. This might make it easier to adjust working within specific time slots.
c. Make reasonable adjustments
If the structure of your schedule or the time allowances you’ve assigned yourself aren’t working, then you might want to make some adjustments. Reassess how long tasks might realistically take to complete based on how well you’ve been able to stick to your schedule so far. If you find you’re completing tasks quicker than anticipated, schedule additional work or make the most of your free time.
d. Monitor the time
Every action throughout your day takes a certain amount of time, whether it be a bathroom break or making your mid-morning coffee. Take notice of the time and factor in enough space for your unscheduled activities as well. It’s important to remember you aren’t a robot, learn how much time you require to complete your work, and try timing yourself if you’re unsure.
e. Make it a habit
Try to make your schedule consistent, so it becomes easier to follow. It’s useful to follow the same morning regime, make time for leisure activities at similar times throughout the week or end your day with the same mindful routine each night. These actions can then become habits and are easier to factor into your schedule each day.
By Justin Charlton-Jones
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