How to Get More Done in Your Workday

Are you someone who finds yourself working so much each workday, with not too much to show for all that work? If so, you’re not alone.

Many people struggle with getting all they need done and completed successfully every day. As such, it is important to learn how to manage your time and execute your workdays better so you are more effective and productive each day.

The more you get done in your workday, the happier and more successful you will be.

With that in mind, here are a some effective tips and ways that you can implement to get more out of your workday:

1.  Get Up Earlier

A lot of time in your day is wasted if the day finds you still sleeping rather than awake and doing stuff. The most successful people in the world are actually early risers.

Although you may like your extra snooze in the morning, waking up early affords you more time in the day to perform more tasks and get more done, thus increasing your productivity each day.

So, get up earlier to get more done. By getting up an hour or even half an hour early, you get a lot more done.

Of course, if you have a long commute and get up at the crack of dawn anyway, then you are good.

2.  Create To-Do Lists

If you struggle to manage and keep track of your work, create for yourself a good old to-do list. It can be a daily to-do list or a long-term to-do list, or even both.

For example, you can create a long-term plan and to-do list to improve your finances. Not only can this increase your focus and make tracking your work easier, but it can also streamline your workdays to get things done and achieve your goals.

Tackle each day step by step and you will have a solid foundation getting the work done in the best way possible.

You may be surprised at how much easier managing your day is when you break it up into microtasks.

3.  Start with the Hardest Tasks

One of the things that you need to really focus on when it comes to a hard day’s work is… exactly that, the hard parts.

If you focus on and get the difficult tasks done first, then the rest of your time can be spent winding down for the day and dealing with the simpler aspects.

If you get the hard work done early in the morning, then you also create room for when something goes wrong. Work isn’t hard without reason and so having the time to deal with any issues that may arise is important.

For example, you can deal with your urgent corporate clients first thing in the morning as that may be difficult. But, then work on your fun blogging job or hobby latter in the day. All depending on the nature and breadth of your work, of course.

4.  Clean and Tidy Up

This is to say, keep your workspace and life neat and orderly.

When you are neat and orderly, you can find everything when you need it and save time that you would otherwise have lost sifting through to find what you need to get work done.

Besides, a messy and untidy desk is usually a bad sign most of the time, as it means you are less organized than you could be. Which also means that you may not get much done in the end.

Cleaning up, especially when working from home, doesn’t only mean washing, disinfecting, or bleaching to kill germs (you should do that regularly). It also means tidying up, removing clutter, and arranging things neatly.

Clutter is the most distracting/worst part of an unity workspace that can have a negative effect on your productivity. Become neat and clutter-free and your work will run more smoothly thereafter.

Get your desk in order and you may be surprised at how much more you get done!

5.  Learn to Say “No”

Sometimes we don’t get enough done in our workdays for a very simple reason: we keep being piled on more. Oftentimes, others put a large amount of work on us against our wishes or desires.

For that reason, it is incredibly important to learn to say 'NO' to anything that is not a priority or that is not your responsibility to begin with.

It can be difficult to say no at work, especially if you are relatively new or early in your career. However, it is a useful skill to learn and apply to your whole life.

if you don't learn to say 'no,' you will be bogged down with endless requests for favors and tasks from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who needs you to do "one more thing." That derails you from your own duties, responsibilities, and goals.

Say 'no' politely but firmly and these requests will eventually dry up. People will soon realize that you are not someone to be taken advantage of.

Bonus Tip:  Focus on One Task, Not Many

You can be swamped with work and tasks to do can pile up quickly. Usually, our instinct is to try and deal with them all at once, in the hope that we can dispense with them all quickly.

However, this often makes things worse because you end up doing none of the tasks well, meaning you work hard will little or subpar results to show for it.

Instead, just dispense with tasks one by one. If you focus on one task exclusively, then it’s much easier to complete it well, which is progress in itself. Then move on to the next task until all is done well.

That way you'll get more done in your workday at a level of quality that is superb, or at least usual or expected.

In Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is important to understand what is disrupting your day and causing you to get little work done. As soon as you remove those disruptions and make provisions for improvement, you'll get more done and enjoy more success.