Entrepreneurship
Working Less and Working Better Is Possible!
Today's world is very busy, but most of our work only keeps the existing wheel turning. What can be done to work more productively?
By Kaan Gülten · First published in Turkish on 22 December 2018 · 5 min read · Read the original in Turkish →
From the driver to the boss, from the cook to the waiter, from the CEO to the tea server, everyone is busy and everyone has a lot to do!
Today's world really is very busy and depends on many changing dynamics. But most of our work is only about keeping the existing wheel turning! Not adding new wheels, changing the wheels or moving to different ones.
Unfortunately, there is a truth we fool ourselves with most of all through the sentence “we're very busy”. Check your phone's statistics right now: how many hours a week do you use it, and how much of that goes on social media and games? The number will be far higher than each of us would guess about ourselves.
A more productive way to work
Suppose you have five different jobs to complete, and ten of each to do. Which approach do you think gets results faster?
- Moving forward by doing one of each job in turn.
- Doing ten of one job and finishing it, moving to the second and doing ten, then moving to the next.
As most of you will guess, the second option lets us work more productively. The reasons are very simple: every time we switch from one job to another, however well we know the work, we have to adapt ourselves; the switch itself costs time, it saps motivation and that shows directly in performance, and the chance of making mistakes is much higher.
From this we can say very clearly that dealing with any notification from our mobile phones will significantly lower our performance and our output for the time spent.
Changes I made in my life
- I turned off social media notifications. I see what is happening on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms only when I choose to log in.
- I turned off email notifications. Unless your job means handling “very urgent and critical” work over email, turn notifications off and don't let them interrupt what you are focused on.
- If you can, take instant messaging apps out of your life.
- Definitely unsubscribe from unnecessary mailing lists.
- Reply STOP every time an advertising text arrives, or block it straight away.
- Set your phone's app updates to run automatically.
- Unfollow low-quality social media accounts.
- Mute your WhatsApp groups.
What to spend the time you gain on
- Read more articles and books
- Think more
- Make time for sport, dance, art and learning
- Learn a foreign language
- Make time for your family and friends
- Spend more time on whatever is most valuable in your work
Translated from Turkish. The text reflects the time it was first published.