(This article is first in a series of five addressing how to spend less time at work – and still be a good employee)
Work can really suck. There’s always something we’d rather do than sit at our desk in the office. Salaried, white collar jobs are largely results driven – whether a completing a project or submitting reports. Sales jobs are clearly results driven. The more sales, the more money you make. In most cases, the quicker you complete your job, the sooner you can leave the office.
If you don’t believe me, try it. Get your work done and leave by 5:00 sharp. Then try leaving at 4:30, after you’ve established that you always get your work done. When you’re doing your job and not adding to anyone’s workload, no one cares when you leave.
Increasing productivity is the name of the game. Before you can increase productivity, you need to be able to define it in personal terms. What are you hired to do? Sell a product or create a financial models? We will call these your “work goals:” what it is that you “do” at work. What activities help you produce and deliver a work goal? Which activities do not lead to any beneficial outcome but you mindlessly engage in anyways?
This should be easy. You simply need to identify what it is you get paid to do. Are you a salesman that gets paid to sell widgets? Or are you a software developer that gets paid to develop a software product? Identify what exactly is your deliverable and be as specific as possible. Chances are, you don’t really get paid to simply sit at a desk for eight hours a day.
The most important commodity that you have is your time. The most important commodity that you bring to your office is productivity in delivering your work goals. You need to figure out where your time and productivity intersect. To do this, begin by tracking how you spend every single minute of your day. Because most of us have a computer at our desk and we use it all day long, you can use a free tool such as RescueTime to track your time. If you don’t have a computer, or if you cannot install RescueTime on your office computer, invest in a small notebook that you can take with you everywhere you go during work. Record how much time you spend on each activity you engage in throughout the day, and what time you engage in it. For example:
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