How can you leave work on time like Sheryl Sandberg?
As I approach fatherhood I’ve been wondering this myself!
So I did what everyone else does. I googled it. That simple Google search reveals thousands of articles claiming the best methods to become more productive. Work smarter. Some are crazy, some are contradictory, some actually make sense.
Here’s a quick rundown of tips from 3 minutes of Googling:
- Prepare your clothes the night before
- Prepare your day the night before
- Prioritize your projects and tasks
- Eat breakfast
- Schedule your important tasks in the morning
- Take a nap (at work?!)
- Take walking meetings
- Do pushups
- Shut off Slack notifications
- Shut off email notifications
- Drink more coffee
- Check email twice a day (really?)
- Stop multitasking
- Start multitasking
- Do short tasks immediately
- Make your workspace aesthetically pleasing
You’ll find these tips all over the place. Now that we have all these tactics at our disposal, how can we use them?
Think about your work day
Where are spots you can improve? Need more focus on individual tasks or projects? Need better time management or prioritization?
This is a good opportunity to adapt others’ ideas for your needs.
- Maybe you can cut meetings to 50 minutes so you can prep for the next hour of work.
- You may not be able to do pushups at your desk, but maybe you can walk around your office or around the block.
- You may not be able to take a walking meeting, so take a standing meeting or use a different room to spur creativity.
Still wondering how this looks as a full day? Luckily being a marketer here at Workzone, I hired an artist to help me visualize a more productive day.
Congratulations! You can now head to the gym earlier, see your kids earlier, or get home to relax a little bit earlier!
Steve Pogue is the Marketing Operations Manager at Workzone. He writes about project management tips and the buying process. When not at Workzone, you can find him playing vintage baseball or playing with his daughter.
