Successful professionals understand the value of doing the right task at the right time.
After all, having something to do doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making the most productive use of your schedule.
Many repetitive and time-consuming tasks can stop you from reaching your goals and maximising your day. These tasks are often classified as “low-value work” due to their inability to yield effective results. In essence, low-value activities serve as distractions that prevent you from engaging in more impactful pursuits. Hence, knowing how to differentiate low-value tasks from high-value ones is paramount.
Identifying Low-Value Tasks in Your Workflow
The overall value of a task will depend on various factors such as your profession, company processes, and goals. With this in mind, it’s good to learn some simple ways to identify low-value tasks in your workflow.
First, consider whether a task is ultimately helping you and your team accomplish critical work. Does it allow you to engage with your teammates and clients? Is it in line with your priorities? If the answer is no, you may need to reconsider its importance.
Secondly, ask yourself if a task has a positive and measurable impact on your organisation. If you can’t measure the results of an activity, then it may not be worth your time and energy.
Once you identify low-value work, you can either choose to eliminate these tasks from your workflow or find more efficient ways to address them. Fortunately, thanks to advancements in technology, many small yet redundant tasks can be fully automated. It can save you plenty of time and let you focus on more significant responsibilities.
While the value of a task depends on your context, here are some common productivity killers that you should look out for:
Addressing Notifications
Notifications can be a big distraction in the workplace, especially if you receive many within a day. Regularly checking and responding to your notifications may seem harmless, but it can eat up hours of your time. It often pulls you away from work, causing a constant shift in focus.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should stop checking your notifications altogether, as there may be crucial work-related matters to address. However, try not to make it a frequent occurrence. You don’t even have to switch off or silence your devices to avoid an influx of notifications. Some applications allow you to block unnecessary alerts during your work hours.
Managing and Answering Emails
According to research, an average employee receives roughly 112 daily emails and spends 28 per cent of their day reading and answering these correspondences. Though responding to emails is still a part of most work cultures, you may waste precious time on this task if you’re not careful.
One effective way to prevent this is by automating your mail. There are software solutions that can send automatic replies and filter priority messages in your inbox. Some applications even have built-in AI to learn your email habits and adopt them. Other applications also come with email templates to help you construct messages.
Another way to prevent emails from eating up too much of your time is by using a centralised team collaboration and communication system. Project management software can help you do this, as they allow teams to track their project progress, organise chats, and share files all in one platform. You won’t have to constantly ask for updates and spend hours sifting through dozens of long-winded email threads.
Scheduling Meetings
Meetings are an integral part of work, as they allow people to share their ideas, raise questions and concerns, and touch base on pressing issues. However, scheduling meetings can be challenging and time-consuming, especially if inviting many participants. It requires you to get in touch with attendees and coordinate their schedules—a task that becomes more difficult if you’re dealing with people from different time zones.
Fortunately, many applications can automatically schedule meetings for you. Specialised communication software applications have integrated features that can find the ideal meeting time slots by analysing the calendars of its participants. Some applications can even send a list of optimal time slots to each attendee to select what works best for them.
Manually Publishing Content on Social Media
If you’re managing your company’s social media accounts or publishing content online, it can be tricky to keep up with the fast-paced nature of this task. Keeping a brand active usually entails posting new content and updates several times a day on multiple platforms. It can take up a large chunk of your schedule and prevent you from attending to other responsibilities.
Luckily, you can use digital tools to help you stay on top of things. Many applications allow you to schedule posts ahead of time and publish them on different social media platforms simultaneously. This way, you can plan, reduce your workload, and make time to pursue more important tasks.
To boost your productivity and reach your goals, you’ll need to know how to best leverage your time and energy. It means prioritising more important tasks over those that can be automated or removed from your to-do list. Doing this can ensure that your efforts are focused on pursuits that produce more impactful results.
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