5 Tips to Organise Your Work Week
Hello there, this is Laura
This week I want to talk about how you can organize your work both on a daily basis and on a weekly basis.
Due to the nature of my job, I have a lot of meetings and I also have a lot of context switching going on in my day to day. A coworker that recently switched positions and now is facing the same asked me how I organize myself in order to get things done
Choose your top 3 tasks
When you sit and think about it, 40h per week is a lot of time. But often we find ourselves Friday afternoon having not completed much of what we wanted to do, maybe even missing some top priority things. While this can be due to a poor schedule, it’s also due to the fact that you might be overcommitting to more tasks that you can finish - either due to time or because there is too much context switching going on. In order to combat this, really sit down and identify the things that absolutely HAVE to be done by the end of the week and make sure those are the ones you’re focusing on. After that, make sure you talk to your manager. - as I mentioned in this video - and explain what will not get done and what needs to be communicated to stakeholders.
I use 3 as a rule of thumb for my week. Generally, 3 important things are about what I can do per week, given that due to running two teams I have around 30h of meetings per week. If you do this exercise a few times, you’ll develop a baseline for yourself which is going to be helpful in estimating your workload.
You can also do this for your daily planning - perhaps today you have one item that you need to complete instead of a myriad of small things. Calling this out to yourself - for example booking your calendar, setting a task in or just writing it in your day notes in the to do section - helps keep you on track.
2. Start with the unpleasant things
I’m sure you’ve heard this before but it really is true, you should start with what is most unpleasant and just get it over with. The more you put off things, the more you’re going to dread doing them and the more you’ll put them off. This will eventually lead to either you cramming to get it done or simply slipping on the deadline, none of which are a good option. Think of your willpower like a battery that is full at the beginning of the day and usually also at the beginning of the week. Use the full charge to get through the difficult stuff in the beginning.
Here’s also something that I picked up from a talk hosted by David Allen is
“If it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now.”
This has been probably one of the most useful things I ever put in practice for myself since it clears up a lot of mental real estate. You don’t have to think about this small task that just sits in the back of your head forever, because you already did it.
Another tip that I like to put in practice for myself is mini time boxing. If there is an unpleasant thing that I don’t want to do - for work or otherwise - I actually time box it and see how far I get. For example, if I don’t want to work on a presentation or document, I’ll just set an alarm on my phone for 15 minutes and force myself to concentrate at least for that time. When the time is up, I stop but often I realize that I already finished my task. And let me tell you, if you don’t have a dishwasher, this also works wonders with making yourself clean the dishes.
3. Keep a work log
I can’t explain how useful it is to actually keep a work log of items that you need to go through. It really doesn’t matter if this is a notebook that you use, one note or just an ongoing document. At one point, especially if you have to do many sometimes small tasks, it’s incredibly helpful to see them all written down.
The most obvious use for this is the fact that you don’t forget anything. However, the second and perhaps not so obvious benefit is that you can look at this list when you determine what you’re going to work on that week. This will help you better understand how much time you need to dedicate for work versus how much time you have in meetings, or if there are any dependencies before you can start.
4. Schedule Deep Work
Blocking your calendar in order to actually do work is such a good practice, I can’t recommend it enough! This is especially applicable if you have a job that requires you to have a lot of meetings. Put some blocks where you decline all meetings, no exceptions, no excuses! The fact of the matter is, sometimes you need more than 30 mins of uninterrupted work in order to get things done and if your calendar is a mess, then you need to put your foot down.
Schedule these slots based on how much work you need to get done but also at the moment when you are most productive. Some folks are more productive in the morning so that’s when you should schedule your deep work, others prefer the afternoon. There’s really no universal time so figure out what works for you.
5. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
I cannot stress this enough, it’s not an issue not to finish something but it is an issue not to tell your stakeholders that it won’t get done. By far, this is the single most frequent point of friction in the corporate environment. Make sure that you are aligned with your manager and you let everyone involved in the project that some things simply will not get done on time.
That’s all for today folks. Let me know in the comments below what tricks you use in order to stay on top of your work!
Until next time, this is Laura signing off.
