Hasta La Ideas

No matter if you’re paying bills at home or working on a proposal at the office, having a fairly standardized method for completing your tasks can be beneficial in numerous ways. It’s easier to keep track of where you are in the process, it reduces your likelihood of leaving out an important step, and you’ll work more efficiently each time you go through the process if you’re orderly with your work.

Even if the tasks you’re completing are ones you have done many times, it can be beneficial to pause before you do them and list out exactly what you need to do. This list can take place in your mind or you can physically write or type it out, based on the complexity of the work.

After creating your list, analyze it to see if you may be able to improve your speed and efficiency if you take on the tasks in a more organized fashion. For example, running errands might be something you do every day on your way home from work. Simply by identifying these regular stops, you may find you can group the trips to one part of town on Tuesdays and the other part of town on Saturdays to decrease the total time you spend running errands (and your mileage).

It usually takes a few times working through a new process to know if it is going to be good for you. It took me close to a year to refine my writing workflow so that the process helped instead of hindered me. After months of trying different methods, I found that I desperately needed a “Temporary” folder on my computer to save all of my work to over the course of a day. At the end of each work day, I open up the Temporary folder and delete or properly save the files to their permanent locations with appropriate file names. If I don’t use this method, I end up with files in the wrong folders, files with weird names, and I save things that should just be deleted. Reviewing contents of the Temporary folder is an additional step, but one I needed to make my writing more efficient.

Take a few minutes to review your regular processes to make sure you are being efficient with your work. Write out these steps in checklist form, if necessary. Then, use your new organized processes to save you time and energy.

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