Lisa Christmas shares her top tips to taking control of your day.
Start each day with an hour of admin. This clears the decks so you can tackle the most important jobs for the day knowing there's nothing urgent hiding among those unanswered emails or piles of phone messages.
Try working on tasks within a strict timeframe. Choose one task, set a timer for 25 minutes, work until the alarm goes off then have a 5 minute break. By working uninterrupted for a decent block of time you'll be focused and achieve far more than flitting between multiple tasks. And there’s something satisfying about ticking something off your list as completed and moving onto the next one.
Discover the art of delegation. What regular tasks could be handled by someone else in the business? As it will take time to handover properly, you're more likely to do this successfully if it feels like a longer term investment. If you're self-employed or work alone, what regular tasks could you delegate to a freelancer – a virtual admin assistant, bookkeeper, call answering service or telemarketer?
Take a lunch break. It seems to make sense to work through lunch in order to meet afternoon deadlines – I rarely took a lunch break when I worked at an agency - but I have found that even a short lunch break away from your desk gives you a chance to recover your energy, problem-solve and hit the afternoon's tasks with renewed energy.
Lisa Christmas has over 22 years’ communications agency and copywriting experience. She has been providing freelance copywriting services since 2012, including social media management. Find our more about Lisa Christmas and how you could free up valuable time by outsourcing your marketing and copywriting.
