Working hard is a virtue. But if you are running around in circles, you won’t get far. You’ll only get breathless. Working smart means being more efficient for maximum output, whether at the workplace or any other environment. Not only will you get the required results but you will find other benefits along the way — reduced stress, a superior sense of achieving goals and a better work-life balance. Here are a few tips that will get you going on working smart and increasing productivity.

List your goals and plan accordingly This seems common sense. But it is surprising that few people plan their day and even fewer people know how to plan it. Any plan that has to be developed needs goals and objectives. You need to know your long term goals (a time consuming job) and have a list of short term i.e. weekly or monthly goals. Remember long-term goals don’t just include work assignments and projects. You need to take into consideration career and life goals too. You can’t separate one from the other.

Once you know what you’re aiming for, you’ll need to rank your goals in order of importance. The list of goals will allow you to determine what you need to accomplish in a month, a week or a day. The daily planning can be done when the day starts or at the end of the previous day.

Make certain that the to-do list is not impossibly long. Also ensure that you will be able to complete the tasks despite unforeseen emergencies and surprises that your boss piles up on you just to make your life more miserable. So plan some free time to accomodate these extra tasks when they appear.

The multitasking myth I have never ever believed in multitasking and I could never understand why appraisal forms consider it an important skill. My own experience tells me it reduces the quality of work because swapping from the middle of one task to another interrupts your train of thought. When returning to the first task you have to dump all ideas regarding the second task and recall all thoughts about the first task that were moving you forward. In fact you never really multi-task but inefficiently switch from one task to another. Research proving that multitasking reduces productivity by around 40pc is now abundantly available in many scientific papers including a number of them published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

It’s true that at the workplace you will always be assigned more than one task at a time and you’re expected to give results on all of them more or less simultaneously. But try as much as possible to give good time to a single task before switching over to another. Reduce multitasking as far as possible. To quote David Allen, the productivity guru, “You can do anything… but not everything.”

Reduce interruptions Interruptions are productivity’s worst enemy. E-mail applications that constantly ping new e-mail messages will break your concentration. Turn off the application and check e-mails only every hour or two hours. Similarly, all unnecessary social media notifications should be turned off. Sometimes colleagues have a habit of coming into your office and taking a lot of your time on not-so-important matters. Stand up and move to the front of your desk to meet them when they enter your room. This is a polite way of ensuring that they stick to the point and then leave you to your work at the earliest.

What’s your best time? Determine what part of the day you do your best work. I am a morning person. I find that I work best in the mornings when I have the mental energy to concentrate hard, ideas flow easily and I do not feel drowsy. But then there are others who are night people. They do better at night when they have the mental energy to concentrate hard, ideas flow easily and they do not feel drowsy. However, studies show that around 16pc early birds feel more overworked than do night owls.

Rest in peace Take your fair share of rest. Breaks at the right moments during office time will energise you for the next few hours making further work easier. A drink or a bite to eat during the break will refresh you mentally and physically. Along the same lines, sufficient sleep at night will ensure that you are energised for the whole day. With a well rested mind you are less likely to make mistakes. Another by-product of adequate rest is a good mood and there is nothing like a good mood to charge up your productivity.

Certain productivity improvement techniques work well with some people but not with others. The key is to give each a try and see what suits you. Once you discover those techniques that do help you out, the next challenge is to make them a part of your daily working habit. This takes some doing but successfully implementing even some of them will work wonders in your life and not just in the workplace.