You’re no stranger to the process of optimization in your business. You’re regularly upgrading your work environment and improving workflow processes.
But have you ever considered how your immediate work environment influences your ability to successfully finish tasks on a regular basis?
The completion of tasks can be slowed, hindered, or stopped by even the slightest of environmental changes.
Case in point: How do you go about your day when there’s an unforeseen disruption to internet service in your building?
While we can’t prevent less-than-ideal situations from happening in our businesses, we can prepare for how we’ll address and go about our work when such situations inevitably arise.
Here are three practical ways to optimize tasks in your business so you can get things done.
Uncover task foundations
Not all tasks are created equal. Some can be completed in one sitting, while others require additional planning and preparation.
What’s more, your ability to effectively complete tasks at any given time hinges on the presence of specific environmental factors.
Writing an email on your desktop computer seems like an easy enough task.
But that’s only the case if the electricity is flowing, your computer has an up-to-date operating system, and your keyboard works.
What basic conditions must be in place for you to complete a task? What are the necessary physical materials, resources, and elements required for you to successfully complete your work?
This may seem like an unnecessary step, but identifying these conditions will help you better manage your work when less-than-ideal situations arise.
Create optimization strategies
Having identified the foundations for a task or two, your next step is to create a varied collection of task optimization strategies.
These strategies will allow you to do your work in some capacity, depending on the surrounding environmental conditions.
The idea here is to develop specific optimal, suboptimal, or superoptimal workflows. Let’s say you want to create a strategy for writing project reports.
Your optimal conditions might include working on your office computer ideally with the door closed, reference materials by your side, and no meetings or calls scheduled for the next two hours. You can proceed with your work as planned.
Suboptimal conditions may include anything that blocks, hinders, or disrupts your optimal work conditions. What if your office is noisy, you have upcoming calls, and reference materials are unavailable?
You could relocate to another workspace with your laptop or work on a specific section of the report. You could also work from memory until you can incorporate reference materials into your report.
Superoptimal conditions may include anything that allows you to grow, flourish, or expand upon your optimal work conditions. What if things are quiet, you’ve no upcoming calls, and you’re finished with reference items?
You could potentially rehearse or record a presentation of your report, start work on another report, or close and archive files.
The idea here is to be creative in your workflow and come up with actionable steps that can be taken under each of the conditions.
Manage your work mindset
The final step is to put your optimization strategies into action.
Sometimes, the only thing you’ll be able to control in your business is your mindset.
Instead of getting overwhelmed and sidetracked when things don’t go as planned, identify the issue at hand, as well as your next steps.
This can be as simple as saying, “I’m working under suboptimal conditions today at the office. I’ll work in the lounge area and work on the middle section of my report.”
Declaring the seemingly obvious can be quite powerful at times.
Make peace with where you are. Above all, don’t let external circumstances completely derail your workflow.
Keep an open mind, seek different solutions, and be flexible in your approach. That’s a well-kept secret to being sustainably productive at work.
Learn How to Do Task Optimization
Productivity skills are important if you want to consistently get things done at work and home.
If you want clarity around doing task optimization yourself, schedule a free 30-minute video strategy session with me today.
How about you? Which tasks are you going to optimize? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!
This article previously appeared on Inc.com.
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