Do you work as a manager or in marketing? I bet you have tons of people who want to bother you all the time, endless emails, and endless responsibilities. I read a lot of Harvard Business Review, and many of their blog articles suggest that figuring out which tasks can be done by someone else, or just not done at all is the best skill you can have. Of course in real life it is a lot harder than that. If you hire the wrong person, you can get in trouble, plus what if they quit?
But, there are many processes in your work. If there are ways to segment each process and do certain less critical segments less often, you might save some time. Or, you might find a more efficient way of doing the same tasks you are already doing.
Emails
What if you get far too many emails every day? There are ways to deal with this. The experts warn against being glued to your email. They suggest going in only once a day, or if you are doing a project, perhaps less than once a day. I have taken this advice to heart, and the problem is that I can easily get two weeks behind on emails and get people mad at me.
But, what if you spend a little time prioritizing your inbox? You could manually or automatedly sort your emails into categories. You can create folders for this. Immediate priorities go in the immediate box. Tasks that you do in bunches go in associated folders such as a “renewal” folder for those paying you for renewals. If you get quick questions from very unimportant people, put those in a folder. Basically, do the critical stuff first. Then, at another time, you can look through the other folders and perhaps just disregard less important emails in those folders.
I run a few directories. I used to put all of the outsourcing applicants on my directory. Now, I put them in a folder. I do an assembly line check to see if their web sites load in eight seconds or less. I delete the applicants that don’t which saves me tons of time. Then, I look to see if they made bad capitalization or grammar mistakes in their application text. I remove the ones with serious errors. I’m dealing with foreigners, so I expect a few errors even from the best applicants. I’ll give people a quick call to see if they pick up and speak clearly. I also see if they answer my questions well. If not, I remove them. The result of this screening work is that I only have to add about 40% of the applicants and save myself hours per month. This also helps my directory to be better quality.
Listings
I had a strategy for dealing with listings that were over due to be logged into. I require my customers to login to their listing from time to time. This tells me they are alive and in business. People move all the time, and without logging in, how can I keep track of things? I was paying too much attention to the listings at the bottom of the list which are the worst quality and don’t matter that much. My new strategy saves me tons of time. I keep track of the higher placed listings more. The middle placed listings that are of low quality get removed if they don’t login after 120 days. And the lower ones — I let them collect dust or have someone else less trained call them. The result of my new system is a huge savings in time.
What about you?
I don’t know what your work realities are, but you probably have all types of things you have to do. Try to find new ways of dealing with your tasks where you can save tons of time! Keep trying new things and measuring the results and the total time spent. You will become more valuable on an hourly basis if you learn who not to talk to and what not to do. Remember, being successful means avoiding most people, avoiding most discussions, and saying no most of the time — according to the experts!