Your employer expects you to multi process. Work on your system, guide the fresh recruits and lend a hand to another project while learning up a brand new technology. This seemingly impossible task set has been accomplished by you on more than one occasion. Stooping under pressure may earn you a peanut or two but it will drastically affect the health of your work life. Therefore it often is a good idea to stand erect and brush off a part of your responsibility and go for a snack.
True, your boss will not be happy and some of your colleagues may frown. Smile, you are taking a healthy route to success. This way your mind will remain fresh and you will gain zeal to plunge into harder work. The idea is to replenish energy half way to exhaustion.
Limit the number of tasks
First and foremost so, you do not have unlimited resources to draw from. Draw up a list of tasks that you must complete by the end of the work hours. Learn to prioritise. Finish up the high priority tasks and put away the low priority ones; don’t worry, even computers work thus. Stack the lower priority work for the next day. At the strike of the hour, wear a serious look and slip out.
At work balance the heavy and the light weight jobs
Work, however gruelling it might be, cannot be completely thrown away; and should not be. Put in extra hours, but let the hours be early rather that late. Make it a point to arrive early at work; rest assured your spouse won’t grumble when you’re home early. This way you force people to make a note of your seriousness at work. The point is to put in more number of fresh work hours. Learn to pre-empt; pause the long arduous task, finish of one or two smaller bits and the resume with the longer one. Try and test if the technique works for you; it does for the computers.
Clear the mental buffer of trouble
Things mightn’t have been in your favour the previous day or the past fortnight. Make a fresh start each new morning. To achieve that it is important to clear off the buffer before going to bed each night. Troubled thoughts, if they persist, will pull down your productivity. Set your mind frame to see through the days challenge with optimism. This does not guarantee success but puts up hopes for sure.
Bring forward the heavy weight tasks
An age old technique to tackle work load by the collar is to give the fresh hours the worst. Select the task you detest the most and knock it off while you’re still fresh. Now take on the next worst task. The algorithm is quite simple. Take on the hardest while you’re the strongest. Next, you refuel.
Push down the light weight tasks
As a continuation of the algorithm from the above point, enter the default section. Check, all you have left behind is a string of simpler jobs and half a day of work. Process this bunch and punctuate them with well-meaning jokes over the cubicle. Finish the last bit in the nick of time. And then scurry. Don’t look back.
It is to be noted that even multi-tasking super computers have more than one processor built in to enable multi-processing. You are only a human with no scope for addition of another processor; you have to make do with the only one. In order to achieve optimum usage of this one without exhausting it you need to switch off from time to time. And have happy working hours.
