How to work smarter and become more efficient so you save valuable hours each week.

One of the most important skills for success in your personal and professional life is your ability to work hard. But hard work alone isn’t enough.

You also need to learn how to work smart.

When you combine hard work with smart work, you become one of the most effective people in your field.

In the past, I’ve written about how to get yourself to do hard things. But this article is about using productivity techniques to work smarter.

Each of these three productivity ‘hacks’ will help you work more efficiently so you have more time left for yourself or to invest in other projects.

1. The Batching Method

Batching tasks simply means you lump similar types of tasks together to complete them in one efficient session instead of scattered throughout the day/week in multiple (less efficient) sessions.

For example, instead of replying to emails dozens of times scattered throughout the day, you can answer emails in one, two, or three ‘batching’ sessions in the day.

Likewise, content creation is perfect to batch. For example, instead of making one Instagram post a day — which is another daily task on your to-do list — you could create seven posts in one day and use a tool to schedule them for the entire week.

Batching similar tasks helps you to save time because it allows you to stay in one mode of thinking instead of having to switch back and forth between different modes of thinking.

If a certain type of task requires you to be very creative — such as writing — it’s difficult to get into this flow after you’ve just done a lot of analytical work — such as answering emails or analyzing data.

Likewise, if a certain task requires you to be very analytical and focused, it’s difficult to get into this mode of thinking after you’ve just done creative work. Each time you have to switch between different types of work (eg. between analytical or creative work), there are switching costs involved.

According to studies, the more times you switch between tasks per day, the less productive you are. You could even lose up to 40% in productivity.

This is why the batching method is so useful. It minimizes the number of times you have to switch between different tasks in an average day or week. And the lower your switching costs, the more productive you are.

Examples of tasks that can often be batched well are:

✅Email (eg. once or twice per day versus dozens of times per day)

✅Meetings (eg. on Monday only versus spread out over the entire week)

✅Administrative work
Content creation (eg. record 5 podcast episodes in one day/week to have enough content for the entire month)

✅Home chores
Groceries (eg. get enough for the whole week instead of getting a little bit every few days)
Meal prepping

2. Apply Parkinson’s Law

Elon Musk once said, “If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days. But if you give yourself 3 hours, it will take 3 hours. The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential.”

This quote describes the idea behind Parkinson’s Law, which states that ‘work expands to fill the time available for it.’

In other words, give yourself a week to write an article and it will likely take a week. Give yourself a day to write an article, and it will likely take a day.

Now, you might think, if I give myself more time to complete a task or project, doesn’t that improve the quality of my work?

Well, not really.

Turns out that if we have time to waste, we will waste it. It’s wired into our psychology.

Most of the extra time we give ourselves is spent ineffectively because we get distracted by the inessential parts of a task, work with less intensity, and tend to waste more time procrastinating.

Therefore, even just purely as an experiment, we can apply Parkinson’s Law to our tasks and projects to see if we can finish our tasks faster.

In many cases — merely because there’s no time to waste — you’ll focus better on the essentials of a task and work with more intensity. This helps you complete the same amount of work in less time.

All in all, give yourself a tighter deadline to complete a task/project and see whether you can get it done without compromising on the quality of the outcome.

If you succeed, you’ve found a way to work smarter and save valuable hours of your time. If you didn’t succeed, tweak with the deadline until you find the optimal balance between speed and quality.

Even though Parkinson’s Law is a powerful way to procrastinate less, focus more on the essentials of a task, and concentrate more deeply on your work, it doesn’t mean you can build a skyscraper in a day. It isn’t magic.

Completing big projects and achieving ambitious goals still takes time — and just because you shorten the deadline doesn’t automatically mean you’ll achieve it within that timeframe.

Nevertheless, Parkinson’s Law provides a new way of thinking about your work. Experiment with Parkinson’s Law to see if you can save a few hours here and there.

3. Use Your Peak Energy Time For Complex Tasks

Everyone has a natural time in the day in which they are most energized and productive. This is called your peak energy time.

During your peak energy time, you tend to have clearer thinking, better focus, more energy, and stronger willpower. In other words, you’ll finish complex tasks much faster during your peak energy time than at any other time of the day.

As your peak energy time is your most productive window of the day, protect these hours by blocking them off in your calendar. Don’t let other people or low-impact work steal these hours from you.

Chances are you already intuitively known your most (and least) productive hours of the day. For most people, according to multiple studies, the late morning tends to be the most productive time of the day. The afternoon, on the other hand, tends to be the least productive time of the day.

Therefore, one of the smartest moves you can make to become more efficient is to schedule your tasks according to your peak energy time. This is why one of my most effective productivity rules is:

The morning is for making. The afternoon for managing.
In the morning, I work on tasks that require me to be at my most focused and productive, such as writing articles, working on WealthWise, or creating products.

I call these tasks ‘making-type tasks.’

In the afternoon, however, I tend to be less energized, focused, and productive. Therefore, this is the perfect time to do email, meetings, Zoom calls, and administrative work.

I call these tasks ‘managing-type tasks.’

Where making-type tasks require me to be at my best, managing-type tasks don’t. Since they can be completed even when I’m not at my most productive, they shouldn’t be scheduled during my peak energy time — which is the optimal time to complete complex, high-impact tasks.

All in all, identify your peak energy time — your most productive window of the day — and schedule accordingly. This is one of the most productive things you can do.

CONTRIBUTED BY Jari Roomer

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