Why work hard when you can work smart?

When you’re running a busy fleet, it often feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. With so many important tasks competing for your attention, it’s easy to feel like you are constantly running behind. This is not good, either for your work performance or your stress levels.

When we’re behind at work, the temptation is to work longer – start early and stay late. While this may work occasionally, if you’ve got an impending deadline to meet, it could actually make you less productive.

A study by Stanford University recently found that working for 70 hours per week is about as productive as working for 50 hours. So, if you’re regularly working 12-hour days or weekends to hit your targets, you may be wasting your time.

The real key to boosting your productivity is to work smarter. That means making the most of every minute of your working day, implementing a few useful tricks and embracing the technology that is available to help you do your job.  

Here are a few easy ways to start working smarter…

Schedule every task 

No matter how large or small, it’s vital that you schedule every task. Not only does this give you a clear picture of what you have to do every day but it also gives you a small sense of achievement as you work your way through your to-do list marking jobs as complete.

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Don’t give tasks too much time

It’s important that you allocate the correct amount of time to each task. And be honest with yourself. If a job always takes an hour, it’s not going to suddenly take half that just because you’ve got other things to do. On the flipside, don’t allocate too much time to a task that doesn’t need it. Keep in mind Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Remember to take breaks

Just as our productivity drops off when we work for too long, so too does it dip when we’re tired. You’re much better off taking a 10 minute break to refresh your mind than starting at your computer screen for half an hour struggling with an easy task because you simply don’t have the brain power. Our brains can normally concentrate on a task for around 90 minutes before losing focus. When you feel that start to happen, take a short break. You should soon see your productivity start to improve.

Let technology do the hard work for you

There’s plenty of technology available to help make your working life easier. This could be simple solutions such as task scheduling apps or productivity timers, up to more comprehensive systems such as GPS fleet tracking.

Embracing technology can help you automate previously time-consuming tasks or to stay organised so you always have access to the information you need as soon as you need it – both of which can give a boost to your productivity.

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