11 Sure Steps to Working Faster
Although almost everyone is mandated by their company to work a minimum of eight hours a day, it is still important to work as fast as you can, so you can have more time for yourself even if you’re in your company.But besides having more time for yourself while in your company, you can also benefit from working faster.
For example, your company might take notice that you are able to finish your tasks fast, making your company consider you for promotions or further responsibilities.
But for those who are not restricted by a mandatory eight hour work schedule by their company, being able to work faster means that you can go home much sooner to spend more time with your family and loved ones.
Here are a few sure steps to help you work faster:
Summary of “11 Sure Steps to Working Faster”:
1. Use a Timer2. Plan
3. Systemize
4. Bundle Similar Tasks
5. Finish Unimportant Tasks in Minutes
6. Organize Your Work Area
7. Avoid Distractions
8. Avoid Procrastination
9. Recharge
10. Avoid Vices
11. Stay Healthy
Final Words
The Details:
1. Use a Timer
You could pattern your work to a race where your aim is to work as fast as you possibly can without making mistakes.
You could also pattern yourself to race car drivers who drive as fast as they possibly can without crashing or damaging their cars.
You can designate “laps” in your work schedule where you finish laps as fast as you can or keep a consistent lap time.
You could also imagine a “reward” for yourself everytime you finish your task ahead of time like having a longer coffee or lunch break.
But timers are important because they help you know if you’re progressing. Working blindly without timing yourself means that you won’t know if you’re working faster or slower.
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2. Plan
Even before you start work, you should first plan your work process. For example, you should be able to know which tasks do not require your full-time presence.
For example, if you’re a kitchen hand, one of the first things you should be doing is to take out the frozen meats from the refrigerator so they can thaw. While waiting for the meat to thaw, you can do other tasks like wash the dishes, mop the floor or prepare the vegetables.
After the meat has thawed, you can then cut them up into slices, ready for cooking. If you had scheduled thawing meat as your last task, you would have spent a lot of time doing it.
You should also know what are your task requirements. For example, if you are a carpenter, you should know which tools and supplies you need before doing your task. For example, not bringing nails and other supplies would slow down your carpentry work.
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3. Systemize
You should also learn to systemize your tasks. This would enable you to order your tasks as they need to be done.
For example, if you’re a carpenter building a complete house, one of your priorities should be constructing the roof preferably in the morning. This is because it progressively gets hotter as the day passes.
Constructing the roof during the hottest hours of the day would make your task very uncomfortable that you might make mistakes and work slower.
You should also know which tasks needs to be done first. For example, if your job is to care for the elderly, you should prepare the bathroom water first instead of bringing the elderly in the bathroom and making them wait while you prepare the bathroom water.
The elderly might become very uncomfortable waiting and become irritating to you which could make you work slower.
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4. Bundle Similar Tasks
There are tasks that can be done in one go. For example, you can cook while tidying up the kitchen at the same time. There are even instances where you can wash the dishes while cooking.
Most people would just cook and waste their idle time while cooking, like listening to radio or watching the kitchen television.
If you’re able to cook and tidy up the kitchen at the same time, you would have reduced your time in the kitchen, giving you extra time to do the things you want.
In the professional world, this is called “Multitasking” and there are many adherents to it, especially those who occupy high positions in management.
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5. Finish Unimportant Tasks in Minutes
Sometimes, you need a morale boost to make you work faster. One way you can accomplish this is to line up together your unimportant tasks and attempt to finish each of them within minutes.
By finishing your unimportant tasks first, it gives you a sense of accomplishment which may carry on to your more important tasks.
Sometimes, you make the mistake of trying to do your most hardest task first, the one which takes the longest time to complete.
This may result in you not finishing all your remaining tasks. It might also result in you not completing any of your tasks for the day.
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6. Organize Your Work Area
The fastest workers usually have all the things they need to do their task right in their work area.
Having all your tools and supplies at arm’s length eliminates your need to stand up and/or walk just to complete your task.
If you have to spend a minute to stand and walk just to reach a tool and if you assemble 100 items a day, you would have spent one hour and forty minutes of your work time.
If you can eliminate this by having your tools right in your work desk or work area, you would have worked faster by one hour and forty minutes. This is almost 15% of your work time if you are obligated to work eight hours a day.
This is why even before you start working, you should organize your work area by laying out your tools and raw supplies as accessible to you as possible.
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7. Avoid Distractions
You should also avoid distractions in your work desk or work area. For example, While a poster or a statue of your favorite car or celebrity might cheer you up while working, they can prove a distraction at times.
They might cause you to lose your concentration which slows down your work or even make you repeat your tasks all over again.
This is especially important if you are working at home. There is just too much temptation to go in your bedroom or living room to relax, watch television and/or eat your favorite food.
Without a doubt, our biggest distraction today is our smartphone, especially social media. If you want to work faster, one of the first thing you should do would be to put your smartphone habit in check while you work.
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8. Avoid Procrastination
Sometimes, we just hate some of our work tasks so much that we do everything that we can to avoid doing them.
For example, instead of reading our emails, we might first spend a few minutes looking at the internet and our social media accounts.
Very soon, the minutes turn to hours until we finally realize that we don’t have anymore time to finish reading our emails. As a result, we might end up missing to read important emails that could affect our personal and professional life.
To prevent these and similar circumstances from happening, we must first accept the fact that our work is important in our lives and we must do them on time whether we like it or not.
You might also find another job that you enjoy better. This makes you work faster because your interest in your new job makes you want to do it as many times as possible.
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9. Recharge
You should also schedule break times in your work so you can recharge. This is especially important if you are doing repetitive tasks.
Repetitive tasks can become very boring if you do it too long. Being bored causes you to lose concentration which in turn leads to mistakes.
This is the reason why weekends were introduced. A very long time ago, people used to work non-stop until Henry Ford introduced non-working days which quickly gained momentum.
Just think of yourself as an example. How do you feel about your work after you’ve gotten back from a vacation? Don’t you feel refreshed and have a more positive outlook of your job?
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10. Avoid Vices
Vices have a negative way of affecting our life which includes our work. For example, if you are a smoker, don’t you always have an urge to stop the tasks you are doing in order to smoke?
Now consider how many times an average smoker smokes in a day, in my previous experience as a smoker before, I used to smoke at least five times a day.
Smoking requires about five minutes and if I smoke five times a day, I would be smoking a total of 25 minutes a day.
This is especially important if you’re smoking at work. Just going to the smoking area in your company could double the time you lose on smoking. In my example, I was formerly losing more than an hour just for my smoking activities.
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11. Stay Healthy
If you are in poor health, you would also work poorly. Being in poor health causes you to work slower than usual.
Also, being in poor health could cause you to lose your concentration on your work, causing you to make mistakes in your work.
That is why you need to be healthy always. You should avoid vices, eat healthy, and keep an active lifestyle.
You should also stay away from sick coworkers. Even a workmate having a flu can infect all the employees in your company. If you have a flu yourself, you should definitely take a break from work to avoid infecting your coworkers.
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Final Words
Working faster has a lot of benefits. Not only does it provide more time for yourself, it also gives you more time for your family and loved ones.
Also, a fast worker is usually seen as a good candidate for promotion by their company management.
There are many steps to working faster, like having a timer & a plan, and by prioritizing your tasks. You should also organize your time among others.
However, recharging by taking breaks, avoiding vices and staying healthy is not only helpful to you working faster, but also helps positively your entire life altogether.
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You Might Be Interested To Read This Article:
Time Wasters: 18 Reasons Why You Spend More Time at Work
For the vast majority of people, doing company tasks/work is a necessity in order to earn money that allows them to provide for themselves and their loved ones.
However, there are actions that unnecessarily lengthens the work done by an employee or their time spent in the company.
The unnecessary actions might be done by the employees themselves or done by the company to their employees.
Whatever the reason or whomever might be doing these unnecessary actions, it is important that they be identified and if possible eliminated. Identifying them enables the employee to lessen the time they spent on their job or their working day in the company.
Here are a few time wasters an employee should know about:...