We’ve all experienced the stress of coming back to work on a busy Monday morning after a week off. You feel like you are literally drowning in a partially written to-do list. You rack your brain but can’t seem to remember all of the tasks you are supposed to be working on. Meanwhile, the seemingly incessant instant messenger and phone notifications just keep on coming. Your colleague needs to schedule a meeting with you in an hour to go over some project details before your quickly approaching deadline. Your boss needs you to schedule a conference call with a client who needs an update. There are so many things needing to get done, all coming in at once. It makes you wonder if it’s worth ever taking another vacation? How will you ever get ahead in your digital life after being out of the office for a week?
Here at Triple Helix, we are experts at helping small businesses and corporations get ahead of their data. Sometimes it’s as simple as needing a more structured workflow process. Sometimes we need to integrate new software solutions that lessen an employee’s burden by automating a chunk of their daily processes. We’ve compiled a list of 5 super simple ways you can get ahead of your data backlogs.
1. Take Advantage of Online Task Organizers Like Asana
If you are relying on good ‘ole pen and paper to keep track of projects, you are probably wondering if there’s a better way. Spending chunks of your day hand-writing tasks out definitely isn’t it!
Online Task Management Applications such as Asana allow you to create a virtual to-do list in a fraction of the time it would take you to write everything out by hand. You also can take advantage of some cool features like being able to change the view from a standard task list to a calendar which breaks down your projects by day, time and priority.
Asana offers a free version which has everything you need to start your journey into better organization. You can also check out other Task Management Applications like Todoist. These are 2 applications which are utilized on a daily basis by our own team here at Triple Helix.
2. Organize Your To Do List
Now that you’ve checked out a Task Management Application, we’d encourage you to explore the different features it offers. One of those is the ability to quickly and easily organize your tasks.
You can organize tasks by due date as well as priority, making it easy to see where things stand at a glance and make sure any pending projects meet deadlines. You can even go all out and plan out your task lists a week – or even a month – in advance. Our dev team here at Triple Helix uses a handy tool called Workflowy.com, which has been an incredibly useful tool!
Organizing your projects by due date and/or priority allows you to make sure nothing is missed in your digital life. It gives you a much better picture of what’s going on in your organization and allows you to really stay on top of things.
3. Remove Distractions
When you are on the clock (especially during a data backlog), your entire focus should be on work and completing the tasks at hand. It’s important to get ahead of the backlog as quickly as possible.
If you are really struggling to buckle down and focus on the tasks at hand, you may want to try simple changes like silencing your phone for a couple of hours. A notification popping up every few minutes can be very distracting. Let your colleagues and any friends or family members who may contact you know you will be off the grid and focusing on catching up in your digital life for a little while. The Pomodoro method is a proven effective method as well, which encourages working in 25 minute increments with a 5 minute short break in between.
There are also applications such as StayFocused which can help you concentrate and catch up. This is a browser extension which can be easily installed for free. It quickly and easily allows you to limit the time spent on social media and non-work websites during your work day.
4. Set a Two-Minute Rule
When you are reviewing what needs to be done, quickly scan over your list and search for any tasks that can be accomplished in two minutes or less.
Instead of putting these tasks off for later, just get them done now. They won’t take much of your time and it will make you feel a lot better being able to check a couple items off your to-do list.
5. Automate Your Workflow
So many individuals and organizations still rely on spreadsheets and piles of documents to keep track of processes, procedures and daily operations. There’s so much time wasted during the day just locating the correct spreadsheet or document for what you are working on.
Taking a look at the software you are currently using in your organization, it’s likely that you can automate a lot of your daily tasks and save yourself a bunch of time (which can be spent focusing on activities that scale your business instead of daily operations).
Contact us at Triple Helix Corporation and see how we can help you augment your existing software to work for you, or set you up with a custom software solution or workflow that will allow you to automate tasks in your business and get ahead in your digital life.
