Do you ever feel overwhelmed or have too much to do? Have you been known to move around like a headless chicken? If so, maybe it’s time to do a Productivity Audit.
Here are a few questions that will help you decide if it is time to audit your efficiency:
Do you feel in control of your workload?
Is your email inbox regularly emptied?
Are you a distraction-free zone?
Are you as efficient and productive as you know you should be?
If you answered “no” to any one of those questions it may be a good idea to stop and take an impartial look at your current systems. By taking an objective look and making informed decisions about your personal efficiency, you will be one step closer to stress-free productivity.
Here are a few simple ways you can assess your current systems to see if you are working as efficiently as possible.
Check Your Hardware
Is your PC or Mac slowing you down or holding you back? Maybe a larger monitor or a dual screen setup would enable you to work more quickly. If your current system is slower than you would like it to be, take a look at boosting its performance. There are many ways to do this, such as doing a hard drive defragment or by buying more RAM. The other option is to replace it completely. If you bought your computer 10 years ago and you are reluctant to say goodbye, take note of how long it takes your PC to boot up. Think of the seconds, minutes and hours over a year that you spend waiting on your programs to load and walk away without looking back.
Reassess Software Programs
Are the programs you use the best ones for what you need to do? Are you using a spread sheet program to store your customer database? Are you using your email program to the best of its ability? Are you using a calendar and syncing it with your phone? There are many ways to do things, but reassessing your goals and requirements is a good place to start to see if you have all the programs that you need to do your job well. The software that met your needs five years ago may no longer be the right one to fit your requirements today.
Share Documents
There are a couple of solutions when it comes to sharing documents. You can either install a wired or wireless network or you can avail of many of the “cloud” solutions such as Google Apps or Dropbox to share common files. Without these types of solutions you are at risk of having different versions of the same file in different places. Dropbox and Google Apps are useful even if you want to share your files with yourself. If you want to access your files on the road, these solutions can be ideal.
Do a Time Audit
How do you spend your working day? Do you work flat out from 9 until 5 or do you mess around and jump from task to task? Do you know how the hours in your day are spent or do you fool yourself into thinking that you only spent one hour yesterday between Facebook and Twitter? There are many programs that can be used to record how you spend your time on your PC, or if you are honest with yourself you can take a sheet of paper and write down exactly what you are doing and how long you spent on different tasks. Awareness is a powerful attribute to have on your side; only when you know how you are spending your time can you know if the things you “busy yourself with” are getting you closer to your goals.
Eliminate
From your time audit, you will probably identify time spent on time-wasting activities. Once you identify the time-wasters, you can eliminate them. Simplify to become more productive. There may also be work that you do that you think is of value, like browsing Linkedin, Twitter, or other social networks. Again, an objective view is necessary. Are these activities adding value to what you are trying to achieve or are they just helping you to avoid the big ugly tasks on your list that you are procrastinating on?
Conclusion
A simple productivity audit can help you to make your systems more efficient — and save you a lot of time and stress. Give it a try…and let me know in the comments what you discovered.
Featured photo credit: noor Younis via unsplash.com
