Work Organization: 10 Tips to master work organization

Wondering what is the secret of successful people in their jobs? Naturally, you immediately notice that this is a completely individual matter, as each employee possesses a unique set of hard and soft skills, personality or character traits. However, there is one element that you can take care of to improve the performance of your daily tasks and boost the achievement of expected results – good work organization. How? Below you’ll find our list of 10 organization tips that can make it happen.

Work organization – table of contents:

1. Plan your work
2. Focus on one goal (and task) at a time
3. Remember to take regular breaks
4. Set priorities
5. Estimate and control time
6. Establish individual productivity cycles
7. Get rid of distractions
8. Work with Kanban boards
9. Use tools to streamline your work
10. Set boundaries for colleagues
11. Better organization of work – now you know what to do

Plan your work

You can organize your schedule in a special online tool, in an online notebook, traditionally on paper (whichever way works best for you) – you can’t forget to plan your work if you’re interested in improving your organization. Writing out all to-do duties for a given day or week is the basis for the next steps we mentioned. However, remember to plan yourself only 80% of the time at work – the rest should be set aside for unforeseen events.

Focus on one goal (and task) at a time

You won’t be able to achieve everything you set for yourself right away – just as you won’t manage to complete all the tasks you have planned for the day before afternoon. Focus on what’s most important at the moment, and you’ll see positive results.

Remember to take regular breaks

It’s best to plan your breaks every day around the same time (as far as possible, of course) – this way your body will get into a certain working rhythm, making it easier to achieve your goals.

Set priorities

Which task is important and urgent, and which to put back? Once you have planned your work, you should determine the order in which you should carry out the various responsibilities (the Eisenhower matrix will help you with this). This way you will know exactly what to do and how to move smoothly from one task to the next, without allowing yourself a moment’s hesitation.

Estimate and control time

To best organize your time at work, you should also rely on estimating how long it will take you to complete a particular task. This way you will gain control over time while increasing your motivation to complete it. Constantly checking the pace of your duties, in turn, will allow you to anticipate bottlenecks and learn lessons for the future (e.g. in terms of the fact that a certain type of task requires an extended deadline). These two actions significantly improve work organization.

Establish individual productivity cycles

What hours do you work best? Discovering whether you are more productive in the morning, noon or afternoon (and how this fact correlates with your meals at work) is the starting point for better organization of your daily work. After all, it’s best to leave yourself the most challenging tasks for when you are most productive so that completing them should come with at least a little more ease. In the period of least productivity, on the other hand, you should perform automatic and repetitive tasks that do not require much commitment. This approach will help you get rid of the feeling of wasted time at work.

Get rid of distractions

Keep in mind that nothing works as badly for performing daily duties as constantly succumbing to distractions of all kinds – checking social media, visiting co-workers or reviewing emails. Why? Because it takes our minds a while to focus on the task at hand and each distraction causes our concentration to fade and we have to start from scratch. For this reason, it’s a good idea to block certain sites for the duration of your work or use the Pomodoro technique (which supports working in cycles) to avoid succumbing to distractions.

In this regard, also note that you encounter distractions both in the office and while working at home – identify what most often distracts you from your work and then try to eliminate these problems to improve your workflow.

Work with Kanban boards

Visualizing your to-do tasks on the Kanban board (column division is do-doing-done) improves control over workflows. What’s more, it allows others to see if they can currently use your resources, or perhaps you are focusing on an important task and can’t find the space to help.

Use tools to streamline your work

Think about this type of software (such as our Firmbee project management software) if you work in a team and feel the need to improve communication between individual team members. Solutions that allow you to store all the necessary information about the processes taking place in one place can very quickly and effectively improve the organization of the work of those involved. However, you must remember to select them appropriately for your team’s needs (by analyzing the areas causing problems).

Set boundaries for colleagues

The last piece of advice is one that few people want to take because it is believed that by doing so you may get an “unhelpful friend” label. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s better to convey to colleagues that you won’t help them at the moment than to forcefully support others and later face delays in your tasks, which can harm both you (physical and mental health consequences related to stress and overtime) and the organization (due to missed deadlines).

Better work organization – now you know what to do

You may think that the tips listed above are “trivial” and certainly not enough to clean up the clutter in your work life. However, try to incorporate some into your daily activities and you will quickly notice that the results will far exceed your predictions. Of course, it’s not the case that all the tips listed above will work exactly in your situation (it all depends on what problems you’ve had with organizing your work so far), but they are undoubtedly a suitable starting point for thinking about a change, carrying it out, and then – enjoying the results.

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