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Our society demands our time be spent in our work; as such many may feel as if they do not have enough time most of the time for their personal life. However, that is only true when they do not learn how to become more productive and efficient in handling their job.

One way you can be more productive and efficient is simply learning how to be more organize, by being more organize you will find yourself becoming more efficient and productive, as such having more time for you and your family.

Striking a healthy balance in your life and work is essential in keeping you and your family happy, thus it is definitely worth it to take the time to organize to become more productive at work.

This article will give a few pointers as to how to achieve this.

-Priority - Instead of doing a lot of things at the same time, which can slow down your progress or even cause you to make mistakes, why not learn how to give priority to the most pressing work? This way you get to focus even more and finish the job faster without running the risks of mistakes.

-Don’t Procrastinate - Eventually, you’ll be facing a pile of boring and mundane job that you do not want to do! Therefore stop procrastinate about doing it and actually sit down and start doing it, since there is no escaping from it either way, you might as well get it out of the way, so that you do not bring the burden home.

-Learn how to delegate - If you are in the position where delegations of responsibilities are possible, then you should do so instead of trying to finish everything on your own. In today’s world, instilling a sense of teamwork and trust is important as collectively you can achieve even greater heights with your colleagues.

-Saying no - Most people would dread to say this word when facing a job request even though they might already be swamped with a huge work load. The primary reason is because they are afraid that others would not like them, however accepting jobs that you might not be able to complete on time or make mistakes while doing so can even have a more devastating effects than saying no. Thus you need to start saying no to request you know you cannot accomplish, explain to your boss about your situation and they might even appreciate your honesty!

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I see personal productivity as the natural result of having a specific set of skills. These skills are: learning, organization, time management, mental control, enhanced creativity, and decision making. In this short article, I will shortly discuss what these mean, and why they are useful. It might also be a good idea for everyone to develop some or all of these skills, as these are all, in fact, quite handy.

Today’s work is rapidly changing, making learning more and more important. Even if the professional skills would not change that fast, we still have to face with constantly changing software, and more modern tools. Many of us are also faced with a push towards constant learning from our employer. Tools like mind maps, and skills like fast reading, can really come handy.

With organization skills, we mean the ability to organize things physically. A structured approach to this often helps for better information retrieval. Questions like “Where did I put that important letter?”, tend to be frustrating, and especially when you are in a hurry. Two good measurements for your level of personal organization are: 1) the size of your email inbox, and 2) the tidiness of your desk at work. You know what I mean.

As third, we have good old time management. Notice how I list time management as a part of personal productivity. For me, time management means things like managing tasks and email efficiently, and having an orderly way to manage your calendar. This is undoubtedly a enormous productivity booster.

Keeping yourself mentally healthy is crucial in society today. We are constantly faced with different pressures from the left and right. If you are not able to cope with stress, you might see your productivity sink through the floor. Ways to keep yourself mentally healthy include meditation, socializing, and living in the present moment.

We have all also faced the challenge suddenly to come up with solutions to difficult problems that are not easy to solve. What should we do in such situations? There are generic ways to solve problems. They allow you to reach a conclusion and motivate it to anyone, even if you are not completely familiar with the field in question. I recommend using these methods in such situations.

Last but not least we have decision making. We all know people who cannot make even the smallest decision, as they simply don’t have the guts to do it. What do I say again? There exists tools to help persons like this.

Putting in some effort and studying the areas above will help your personal productivity. That is guaranteed.

The author, Harri Jussila, contributes regularly to his blog Time Management Solutions, which is fully dedicated to time management and personal productivity. In addition to other articles around managing time efficiently, there you can also find a more comprehensive productivity definition.

categories: personal organization,personal productivity,time management,productivity,self help,Self Improvement,work-life balance,motivation

When you just can’t bring yourself to start something you actually should do, you are procrastinating. We often procrastinate almost unnoticeable. The result is that you end up doing some easier but completely irrelevant task, like checking your email or going to Facebook for the third time during the same hour, which is not good for your time management. This article will discuss some tips that might be useful when you catch yourself procrastinating.

The reasons for procrastination are often unconscious. They include perfectionism, distractions, fear of failure, and fear of success. In addition there exists a number of other reasons too, as we are all different. Successful procrastinators also often suffer from a combination of causes. Therefore, I think it is more valuable to focus on the solutions, at which we will take a glimpse on below.

At Time Management Solutions, we have listed some common suggestions for overcoming procrastination. We have also divided them into two groups: fast solutions and preventive solutions. This article focuses on fast solutions.

Fast solutions to procrastination are things you can do when you catch yourself procrastinating. Two examples of fast solutions are 1) lowering your own demands, and 2) working only for a fixed period of time.

Lowering our own demands is something worth thinking about every now and then. This is true especially if you catch yourself imagining that the outcome of your work should always be something exclusively superb. Well, guess what? In most cases it does not have to be.

What the perfectionists don’t often realize is that everything doesn’t need to be perfect. After all, if I remember correctly what was thought in engineering classes, quality is essentially about conformation to specifications. Well, how does this help? This realization is important, because it now gives you the freedom to choose the battlegrounds into which you go with 100% effort. These are probably the time you really want to impress, like when you are preparing a presentation for your boss, or writing that critical CV for your dream job. Generally, you should not hesitate emailing.

A second very effective tip is to restrict the time you allow yourself to work on a task. This approach is promoted in the book “The Now Habit” by Dr. Neil Fiore. It requires that you choose a period, often between 10 and 40 minutes, and just start working on the task. When the time is over you have to take a break.

The beauty with this trick is that you are immediately freed, even before you actually have started. You are liberated, because you know that in 20 minutes (or whatever interval you have chosen) you will be free to take a break and do something refreshing. When the focus shifts from completing a task to starting a it, the completion will inevitably follow. If you, on the other hand, are having a mindset that states, that you should sit down and stay working and focused on one single task until it is ready, you may even feel imprisoned, a thus you also welcome procrastination. Furthermore, we have this: once you really get started, you will notice that you might even enjoy the task, and the subsequent intervals may even feel pleasant. Now, who would have thought that!

If you are a perfectionist, don’t always be. I will discuss preventive solutions in a separate article. Mastering a few fast solutions like the ones above, together with some preventive measures, could potentially help you a lot at managing time.

Harri Jussila is associated with Time Management Solutions, an on-line resource for time management and personal productivity. http://www.time-management-solutions.com