The development of communication tools, the dissemination of a large amount of information, the expansion of organizational structure and the diversification of task requirements have made our work more and more arduous. Especially in recent years, office white-collar workers are increasingly faced with tasks that can never be completed, energy that can never be concentrated, and performance that always lags behind the ideal expectations.
Every morning when you come to the office, a lot of documents, emails in the mailbox, ringing work phone calls, instructions from the boss, various meetings … all keep you busy, and even want to know what to deal with first? What can be postponed for a few days? When you finish these tasks, the day's work will come to an end, and the things that need to be solved urgently and the desired work effect can't be achieved on time.
Should you seriously consider that all these things you do are really closely related to your work and must be done, not meaningless?
Xiao Wang has been in the company for almost eight months. Every morning, after he arrives at the company, he first finds out the documents and files that have been completed yesterday and what needs to be done today from his messy desk. When he finished clearing the table, it had been 40 minutes. Then, the company's phone started ringing off the hook, and Xiao Wang began to answer the phone again, recording the consultation of each visitor in detail; At the same time, a series of things came from the boss's office: copying documents, changing water, notifying meetings and so on. By the time Xiao Wang finished some things one by one, it was past lunch time. After a nap, afternoon work flooded in again. He turned on the computer and inquired about the company's mail until it was finally getting less and less (but always endless), and it was almost time to get off work. As a result, in the end, what should be done is still unfinished. So, I have to work overtime at night. Sun Jie, who works in the same office, not only doesn't have to work overtime, but also can finish things in an orderly way and feel refreshed every day. In desperation, Xiao Wang asked Sun Jie how to deal with this pile of unimportant chores.
Sister Sun told him an important principle of office work: learn to ask for help and let go of activities and information unrelated to work. For example, clear up the files on your desk before you leave work every day-those that have been completed, those that need to be completed urgently, and those that are not urgent, which can be postponed for a while, so that when you come to the office in the morning, what needs to be done will be clear at a glance, which not only saves time, but also avoids mistakes; Another example is changing the water in the boss's office. You can ask your brother and sister to do it. You will have more time to yourself, work will be handy and efficiency will be greatly improved. There is no need to work overtime day and night.
Xiao Wang suddenly realized that it was much more efficient to do things according to Sister Sun's method. I'm doing better and I'm in a better mood. The whole person seems to be completely new.
In daily work, there are always times like headless flies, when I am at a loss about the documents and complicated tasks on my desk, which makes a lot of work time wasted on unnecessary things and greatly reduces work efficiency. This requires us to find out what is necessary and what is meaningless before we start work every day. In this way, we can improve work efficiency and make our daily work easier.
Why do you always do meaningless things?
In the workplace, we usually fall into the following traps in time control.
1. Habitual procrastination: When individuals lack enterprising consciousness, sense of responsibility and serious attitude towards work and life, they will habitually postpone specific work, especially things they are not good at, instead of trying to solve it immediately, resulting in wasting time doing meaningless things before solving this matter.
2. Don't deal with uninvited guests and all kinds of unreasonable phone calls: According to a survey, the office will be interrupted every 1 1 minute on average, and it takes up to 25 minutes to get back to work. Therefore, if we can't solve the above problems smoothly, it will cost us a lot of precious time. Ideally, don't answer the phone at work, don't read the materials, don't open the mailbox, and don't close the doors and windows, which can reduce distractions and interference and keep the current rhythm and feeling longer. In practice, it is impossible to keep this state, and office interruptions are inevitable, such as telephone calls, visits, emails, etc. Are very helpless.
3. Not good at dealing with all kinds of requirements: As a clerk, it may be difficult to refuse the instructions of the superior, but if this matter is not within the scope of their duties, even if they take over the requirements, they may not be able to do it well. At this time, reasonable refusal is a wise choice. For managers, they are often prone to make the following mistakes:
Worry about subordinates doing something wrong
Worried that subordinates are too good.
Worried about losing control of subordinates
Unwilling to give up this easy job
No suitable subordinate authorization can be found.
In fact, everyone's energy is limited, especially managers should learn to delegate power and put their main energy and time on more important things.
4. "Meeting disease" is rampant: Many middle and senior managers have pointed out that meetings actually occupy a quarter or even a third of their daily working hours! However, what puzzled them even more was that almost half of the meeting time was wasted!
Let go of activities and information unrelated to work.
In view of such a complicated matter, what way should we take? Our strategy is to shorten the interrupted time, put down activities and information unrelated to work, and minimize its negative impact.
1. Set the mail processing time to be once every 3 hours, and handle it separately according to the priority.
2. Shorten the time for answering and making calls:
Prior agreement and preparation
Keep your opening remarks short and clear.
Control the conversation time and keep the topic of the conversation.
Filter out unimportant calls.
3. Accept the request reasonably: Before accepting the request, we might as well ask ourselves-is this request within my responsibility? Is it helpful to achieve my goal? If you accept it, how much will it cost? What will happen if you don't accept it? After this "cost-benefit analysis", you can decide the choice.
4. For grass-roots personnel, be good at using resources: learn to obtain the required data from relevant departments or personnel, which not only saves time, but also ensures the correctness of information. For example, if you want to know the department attendance information this month, you might as well ask the department secretary; If you want to know the company's attendance information, ask the company's attendance administrator, and so on.
Work in a planned and organized way.
Aside from activities and information unrelated to work, there is only one purpose, that is, to spend time on really important things and prevent some meaningless things from wasting some time at work, thus reducing the amount of tasks and time in our work and easily completing the day's work. Therefore, we must know how to allocate time, and work in a planned and organized way based on the principles of light before heavy, tight before slow, and urgent before slow. So, how to work in an organized and planned way? Mainly reflected in the following aspects.
1. Classify related work;
2. Arrange the sorted transactions according to the process or priority;
3. Processing according to the arrangement order;
4. In order to make the above plan, it is necessary to arrange a period of time to plan;
Since the work can be carried out in a planned way, it naturally depends on what order the work should be carried out and which can be carried out at the same time.
Easy work, no overtime.
Fortune magazine once wrote: "Being busy is the greatest charm of work." Being busy is the biggest worry of work. In fact, many of our "troubles" are caused by low work efficiency, and one of the main reasons for low work efficiency is that we don't adjust our working state and working methods according to the changes in the working environment mentioned above, but waste our time on things that have little to do with work or are not very urgent. For example, the division of responsibilities is not clear, and repetitive work is not very important, such as constantly handling work emails; "hands-on, hands-on", no matter what, we must ask ourselves and find out the progress; Poor communication with subordinates and superiors leads to repeated revisions of one thing; Interrupted by some unplanned things, I can't continue to work efficiently.
In view of these problems, a series of suggestions are put forward here, which I believe can help people in busy and complicated work. Although the effect may not be obvious at first, as long as you stick to it, I believe you will soon be able to enter the working state in a new way and greatly improve your work efficiency. From now on, you don't have to work overtime, but you can also work easily, and the results of your work will not be less than those of working overtime day and night. Being appreciated by the boss is no longer a distant dream!
I hope you can seek a suitable fulcrum position through bit by bit promotion and accumulation, constantly strengthen the strength of organizations and individuals, and promote the improvement of life and work quality. I believe everyone will live a meaningful and happy life!