work hacks

We’ve spoken before about the one-minute rule. We also talked about ways to use this rule at home.

What about at work?

Here’s how you can use the one-minute rule…

with your emails

if you’ve opened and read the email, and don’t need to refer back to it, delete it 🙂
if you need to delegate, forward it so that other people can work on it while you go through the rest of your inbox
decide there and then on your next action step and quickly type into the beginning of the subject line READ/ MEETING/ TALK TO ___ so that when you’re ready to work, you know exactly what to do next

in meetings

I like to write my meeting notes on the top 70 – 80% of the page and leave the bottom section for actions, OR sometimes there’s so much being said, I just write notes and later as we summarise, I allocate actions and I write the initials of the person in the margin. Now for the rule…

do your quick actions in one-minute bites immediately after a meeting
many actions are multi-step actions but you can always do the very first step even if that first step is just to allocate a block of time to work through the actions (“actions from XYZ meeting”)

with daily or weekly planning

if you’re a daily planner, start the next day’s to-do list page and keep it ready
as things pop up, add them to your list so you don’t have to keep it in your head or on random sticky notes in your notebook
the same principle works for weekly planning but since I don’t know if I need two more pages to close off the week or eight, I use a long post-it note for next week’s actions. When I’m then ready to make my actual weekly list, I have all my priorities in one place.

How do you already use the one-minute rule at work? Can you think of where you could use it?

My 5 best work hacks

Interestingly, I made a note in my bullet journal to write this post after hearing some work hacks on a podcast.

Of course, I thought that, as a full-time working mother, I should also talk about my own work hacks.

So here we go with mine, and I’d love to know about your own work hacks too.

I hold fast to my end-of-work-week routines

I wrote a whole post about this year. If you haven’t read that post, give it a read – I’ve been following that new work routine for more than 18 months, and it’s honestly, changed my work life.

2. I make a daily to-do list (also known as my Eat the Frog list)

This is linked to number 1, but not quite. I started a day recently with 3 meetings and only got back to my desk after lunch. I realised towards the end of the day that I was feeling unproductive. Do you know why? I ended up working in my inbox instead of on my to-do list.

3. I reply to emails straight after reading if I can, and then file/ delete immediately

This is one of my best hacks. It’s like the one-minute rule, but for your inbox. When you’re in email process mode (in other words, dedicated email time), read and answer, and then file or delete (I have always been in love with the delete button). Not all emails can get done quickly but if they can be attended to quickly, do so.

4. I make an agenda for meetings and circulate beforehand (preferably in the meeting invite notes), and I send out action points afterwards

It’s always useful to know why you’re attending a meeting and what you want to get out of it. Linked to that point, I try to make the meeting shorter rather than longer, and if I know a meeting is likely to run over due to chit-chat, I schedule it before another hard-start one, so I have a legit excuse to leave.

5. As far as possible, schedule days for deep work and days for meetings

I currently have the option to work from home occasionally and I protect that time for deep work. I probably get done on a work-from-home day what I get done on two days at the office.

It does mean that when I’m in the office, I usually have many, many hours of meetings, but I find that I’m more productive on a weekly basis than having meetings scattered on every day during the week.

I’d love to know what your best work hacks are so I can also add some tips to my arsenal 🙂