Office Productivity Booster: 3 Tips I use

Here are three tips that i have personally benefited a lot from at work.

• Read through your emails 2-3 times a day

Stop checking your emails every few minutes. I use Lotus Notes for work emails and had replication set to 1 minute. Now, I have moved away from those crazy days and check mail between 2-3 times a day. Once at the beginning of the day and once more around around 3 pm in the afternoon. What this has done is left me a lot of time to do "actual work". I am now no more a slave to my emails. 

• Stop multitasking

This is really critical. Multitasking is crazy. There are tons of research on the ill-effects of multitasking on attention, concentration and ability of recall information. So, to really do quality work, just focus on do one thing at a time. If you are really keen, you can use the Pomodoro technique. I use it fairly regularly and think it brings in a good deal of focus as it forces you to work against the clock.

• Put your important tasks on your calendar

Previously most of the time, my calendar just had my meetings in them. Then I realized that the meetings were, with a few exceptions, a near complete waste of time. Time for the real work that I was doing was never planned for. So, I started blocking my time on my calendar for all the important work that I had to do that day or week. So now, my calendar is more a true reflection of what I need to do at a particular time (and yes, I include both work and personal tasks in my Lotus Notes calendar and sync it with my mobile phone).


There are lot of other learning that I have had over the years to be more productive and use my time more effectively, which I will keep sharing from time to time.


Let me know if you have any good productivity booster that you have particularly benefited from yourself.