How to Shorten Your Workday – 10 Tips to Boost Productivity

1. Don’t check your email first thing in the morning. Don’t even switch on your PC until after you’ve had enough time to plan your workday out.

2. Create a to-do list. It is very important to devote some time to planning out your day. List down all the things you need to accomplish by the end of the day. Nothing beats the feeling you get when checking completed tasks off the to-do list. When planned and executed well, you can even finish your work by early afternoon and head home happily.

3. Prioritize your tasks. Put the important and urgent items at the top of the to-do list. This is the most effective way of boosting your efficiency and eliminating procrastination. The less urgent and less important items can come later. When you tackle the things you generally tend to avoid, you’ll breeze through the rest of the day.

4. Start your phone calls. Again, tackle the ones you generally tend to avoid. Once you complete the “difficult” calls, you feel a sense of achievement and this feeling helps you breeze through the easy ones.

5. Open up your PC and respond to emails. This step should come only after you have gone through the first four ones, and completed urgent items that don’t need the use of a computer. Sift through your inbox and address each of the emails that have accumulated since your last login. Respond, delete or file them appropriately. In case a new action item crops up, add it to your to-do list as per priority.

6. Block sites that suck away your time and energy. I have blocked all those sites I don’t want to get dragged into, by using the leech block software. This has helped me stay away from non-productive sites which I tended to visit in between important tasks. I highly recommend leech block or similar software to help you increase productivity at work. This advice was taken from The 4-Hour Workweek.

7. Customize your email settings. Make sure you don’t receive emails more often than every four hours. Programs like Microsoft Outlook allow you to determine the frequency of email delivery to your inbox. In any case, you can always click the receive button if you are expecting an urgent email.

8. Close the door. At the workplace it can get difficult to avoid water cooler conversations. Sometimes you need to just close the door and focus on your tasks so that you can finish the day early. Don’t let yourself be trapped in too many non-productive conversations. Obviously you do need to indulge in SOME of them to maintain camaraderie and build relationships. One on one conversations usually get out of hand, so I just bow out after a couple of minutes citing a pressing issue. It’s much easier to slip away when many people are involved in the conversation. The trick to maintain good relationships in spite of not getting involved in conversations is to say hi when walking past someone and carrying on walking. People will happily respond to your greetings but won’t hold you back because they’ll know you are busy with something.

9. Don’t gossip. It is highly detrimental to productivity at the workplace. Try to stay away from gossiping altogether. If it’s not possible, just say a good thing about the people involved and turn your mind away.

10. Head home on time! By putting the above steps to good use, you can boost your productivity and complete the day’s work much before the scheduled end of day. That’s the whole point, right? Create time for your family, hobbies or some other business. If not for the above tips, we generally tend to start the day slowly and realize only after lunchtime that we need to get going, which never really happens and we end up staying late to complete the day’s tasks. Some of us even time our actions with those of the boss. If he’s present, we work hard; and if he’s not, we while away the time. It is of no use to “look good” in front of the boss. What he really wants is work completed as per schedule and as per the requirements. Employers want results, and if you deliver the results, you don’t need to “look good”.
Many of the above ideas were taken from The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.