Get More Done in Less Time With a Schedule

We all implement schedules to some degree in our daily lives. You may have certain hours that you have to spend in the office. Your kids have a regular school schedule. And as result of work and school hours, we have a rough schedule of when we need to get up and when we go to bed during the week.

Those schedules keep us on track and make sure we show up for work on time. The same concept can help us both at work and around the house. Let’s look at a couple of examples on how scheduling or setting aside blocks of time for certain tasks can help us get more done in less time.

In the office, it will help to set aside time to answer email and return phone calls instead of dealing with both throughout your workday. Turn off your phone and don’t open your email program until it’s time to deal with both. Scheduling time for email and calls allows you to stay productive. During your scheduled time to deal with both you’ll be in a frame of mind to answer questions and deal with issues that have arisen. You can work through them quickly and productively.

More importantly, you won’t be interrupted throughout the rest of your work day by ringing phones and beeping email alerts. Instead you can work on important tasks without the disruption. This one little change of scheduling your email and phone time can have a huge impact on your overall productivity. Do the same with meetings and the likes.

At home, having a cleaning and chores schedule in place will make the work go much quicker. And since you’re only focusing on one task at a time (cleaning the bathroom for example), you won’t feel as overwhelmed. Make a weekly cleaning schedule as well as one for running errands, getting groceries and the likes. It will help ensure that you’re fridge is stocked, you’ve got plenty to fix healthy meals at home and that your house stays in order. You’ll be glad you scheduled and took care of most of those household chores during the week by the time the weekend rolls around.

Instead of spending all day Saturday catching up on laundry and cleaning chores, you’ll be able to go do something fun with your family. And that’s the real reason we want to be more productive isn’t it? It’s not so we can do more work, it’s so we can decide what to do with our free time and enjoy it with the people we love.

What can you schedule to make your week go smoother? I find that one of the most important aspects of a schedule is to be realistic with it. Be honest about how long it will take to complete a task and schedule it into your day/week. If you were wrong about the amount of time, don’t beat yourself up about it – simply re-adjust your schedule and move on.

Most importantly, schedule some time for yourself…