7 Ways You Can Increase Your Efficiency

​​You work 80 hours a week for your company. However, you still don't get around to taking care of the big, important issues such as sales development, process optimization or talent management? In short, your efficiency is very low? Welcome to the club! 

Many successful entrepreneurs feel the same way as you. Every day you are overwhelmed by 100 pressing issues that demand your immediate attention. And yet another day when you couldn't take care of your actual, important tasks. 

Urgent does not mean important

You guessed it: the urgent issues are not always the most important. And the big, important issues are rarely urgent - and that is precisely why they are so often postponed. 

This is a risky maneuver: 

1. You fail to continually develop your company and set the course for future growth.
2. You risk burning out too quickly due to the persistently high workload. 
 
Every second manager worldwide regularly feels exhausted at the end of their working day - a sure warning sign of burnout. 

That's just how it is as an entrepreneur, don't you think? But it doesn't have to. 

I would like to show you seven ways to increase your personal effectiveness. This creates time to tackle the major levers in your company. And you suddenly have time for your family and private life again. 

Finally time for your big topics

Increasing efficiency Way No. 1: Say no more often!
Everyone wants something from you, and everything seems urgent. Don't let others dictate your priorities. Decide for yourself which tasks you want to tackle - and which you don't. 

For each task, ask yourself: 

Does the task really advance your company? 
Are you really the one person who can do this job best, or would you be better off somewhere else? 
What bad thing would happen if you don't complete this task? 
 
Don't fill your day with busy tasks. These always seem urgent, but they don't get you anywhere. It's better to say no again and use the freed up time to tackle the big levers in your company.

Increase efficiency  Way No. 2: Do unpleasant things according to the “first in – first out” principle.
Are you one of those people who initially cleaned the apartment or went to sports during your studies in order to avoid unpleasant tasks (study for an exam, start your master's thesis)? 

Even as an entrepreneur, there are always tasks that are at the bottom of your popularity scale. Just the thought of it makes you uncomfortable. The same mechanism is triggered here as it was during our studies: our brain tries by all means to avoid unpleasant feelings. Therefore, it will reliably provide you with all sorts of rational justifications why you cannot do this unpleasant task now, but instead a completely urgent other task.

The result: you push unpleasant topics to the back of your mind. Important tasks remain unfinished. And because you know that this avoidance behavior is wrong, the hole in the pit of your stomach grows deeper every time you think about the task. A real vicious circle. 

What has helped me to tackle unpleasant tasks consistently is an uncompromising “first in – first out” principle. I work through my tasks in order from bottom to top - either as emails in my inbox or as a to-do list.

The order of these tasks is not prioritized and is therefore negotiable. This is how I managed to complete unpleasant tasks one after the other, like a machine. 

Pro tip: If you have experience with mindfulness meditation , direct your focus specifically on the negative feelings that an unpleasant task triggers in you. If you're like me, you may notice that these feelings are nothing more than physical symptoms (fast pulse, queasy stomach, heat, tingling fingers, etc.). And these often become weaker just by specifically feeling them. 

Increase efficiency  Way No. 3: Only work through your inbox once a day.
Are you proud of how quickly and reliably you answer emails? Many people confuse this speed of response with professionalism, reliability and quality of their work. But with every email you answer in between, you allow yourself to be distracted from your actual tasks and impose other priorities. 

Here's how to spend as little time as possible in your inbox:

Set a block the day you work on your inbox. 
Inquiries that you can answer within two minutes can be dealt with immediately.
Leave the remaining emails in your inbox and deal with them chronologically when you get to them. (You should communicate this procedure to your team beforehand.)
 
Increase efficiency  Way No. 4: Set yourself fixed blocks for important tasks.
You cannot work on any topic that lasts longer than two hours according to the “first in – first out” principle. Because you hardly have time blocks lasting several hours, and these tasks would otherwise clog up your system. 

Set aside fixed 30-minute blocks each day for longer tasks like this. I like to set blocks like this in the early morning when I have a lot of energy and no meeting requests can get in the way. 

This way you work slowly but steadily on larger tasks. The constant progress you make will motivate you day after day.

Increase efficiency  Way No. 5: Only take on as much as you can do in a week.
Nothing is more demotivating than long to-do lists. And nothing seems more unprofessional than making team members wait weeks for your response. Therefore, only take on as many tasks as you can safely complete in a week. 

Plan 80% of your time and leave 20% free for unforeseeable things. This 20% will be filled quickly. For example, I keep Friday free to work through my to-do list, so that the oldest item on my list comes from Monday at most.

Increase efficiency  Way No. 6: Keep your team up to date.
Nothing makes people more uneasy than the feeling of not being up to date. Therefore, give your team an update on the status of all projects, tasks and topics at least once a week. For each task, give a rough estimate of when you will take care of it. But don't get pinned down and say straight away that it could take longer. 

In this way, you relieve yourself and your team of unnecessary pressure of expectations. If you don't complete a task by the estimated date, don't let the deadline pass silently, but inform the other person as quickly as possible. People don't mind if appointments are postponed. But they want to feel like you're in control of your tasks.

Increase efficiency  Way No. 7: Don't get tied down to deadlines.
Deadlines are poison for your to-do list. Because they act like an accelerant for urgent to-dos that you have to do because they promised. However, these deadlines often distract you from your actually important tasks (e.g. the daily 30-minute blocks). 

Something will always fly in with a shorter deadline. Don't give in to this activism and take back control of your to-do list. Instead, give your team rough time estimates and update them weekly. This means you can work on your own issues calmly and with concentration and find time every day to take care of the really important tasks. 

Conclusion
The important tasks are never the most urgent. And the urgent tasks are rarely important. Once you have recognized this, you can restructure your calendar so that your work achieves more impact in less time. 

https://justgrow.eu/blog/​

If you're interested in reading more of Olaf articles please visit the website link above. (Please note that Olaf's site is in German but Google translate does an excellent job of instantly translating it to English.)

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