Getting things done is probably the universal characteristic we can find to describe every possible job on Earth (and the universe, in case you’re an astronaut). In the era of new technologies, however, the concentration at work has never been more difficult. It’s especially valid in professional environments, which require spending a lot of time before the computer, like in case of UI or UX designers. Avoiding all possible distractions the Internet has to offer while maintaining a high productivity profile could be an arduous task. Go through our glueglue listicle and get ultra-organized to reach goals faster!
1. Visualize your tasks and don’t let yourself forget about them
First off, don’t keep your tasks just in your head. Make sure you have them written down in a place you often check or see. It’s what makes your goals more official and meaningful. Visualizing will also help you memorize and clear out the tangled thoughts.
Choose the mean that would suit you best. It could be a simple to-do list, a table with subtasks written on it, or an evaluation chart where each assignment has its end date.
2. You’re not alone
If your project is a team effort, there’s a great variety of online tools like Dropbox paper orAsana that can help you and your coworkers survive in the bundle of responsibilities and deadlines. With the Dropbox paper, you can work together on single documents, share your thoughts and assign tasks to each other. It’s especially useful when you create the texts for a website and brainstorm from different locations.
Asana is an app we can’t imagine our day without either. The tool provides a separate board for each project you can customize adding different columns, rows, and categories. You can create tasks, subtasks, comments on the progress you’ve made and share the files. More importantly, everyone can have an overview of the responsibilities, and – if you integrate Asana with Slack – you get notified on Slack once the assignment is set up or finished. How cool is that? 😃
3. It’s the final countdown
People love countdowns. Whether it’s counting the number of kilometers in the car, calculating the kilo loss or measuring the kids’ growth on the wall, we like the sense of progress and witnessing the outcomes. Visualizing your thoughts doesn’t only help remember and order the tasks, but also enables you to go through your projects with motivation and satisfaction.
Keep yourself on a good track and nail assignments one after another. Seeing how well you perform will motivate you to tick off all the things from the list as soon as possible. And who doesn’t like getting rid of distressing duties?
Set a weekly schedule and assign to each workday 3 most pertinent projects you need to do and stick to that. It will be easier for you to focus on only those three things and spend less time worrying about other tasks. At the end of the week, you’ll have a clear outline of your productivity ups and downs.
4. Famous two-minute rule
The two-minute rule described by David Allen in “Getting Things Done” is a very efficient way of beating procrastination. Having prepared the list of tasks beforehand, think which one of them can be done in less than two minutes. Stop postponing those little pebbles on your path to success and have them done before you know it.
Now, the catch is, don’t think about those 2-minute issues while working on other projects, because that will make you deconcentrate and start doing millions of things at once. Instead, check your list during the transition times, after you finish one project and get ready to start another one.
5. Evaluate
The secret sauce to being ultra-organized is the evaluation. Remember when we said people love counting down? Well, it’s not only a great tool to keep up the good work but also serves as a great evaluation sheet. Knowing your results will allow you to analyze your strong and weak points. With the list of tasks (un)done, you’ll notice what days and projects required the most effort and, by analogy, you’ll know how to plan your week ahead more effectively.
Besides, being aware that you’d go through a self-evaluation at the end of each week will make you more determined to close as many tasks as possible to feel the sweet taste of accomplishment and enjoy the relaxing weekend.
Try it for yourself
For centuries we’ve lived according to the cycles of nature. The idea of a new beginning is somewhat fascinating and magical. With the New Year, the new week and the new day, we like making a change and improving ourselves. Whether it’s a 2018 resolution or a just a need for more productivity in life, choose your own timing and use these 5 tips to get ultra-organized and reach goals faster than ever before.
