Actions are not equal to effective actions.
The Translation Bureau is a compilation team that focuses on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on foreign new technologies, new ideas, and new trends.
Editor’s note: Busy, but inactive? That’s because you spend most of your time on low-value work. If you work nine to five, just reply to someone else’s news every day, and let yourself be in a passive state, this will not let you improve. The key to survival in the workplace is actually the value of work. To truly make progress, we must learn to identify what is a high-value action and prioritize time to assign it to these tasks. This article is translated from Medium, author Thomas Oppong, originally titled “To Achieve Real Progress, Focus on High-Value Productive Actions”, I hope to inspire you.
In your career, it’s important to know what is “important but not urgent”. When everything is urgent and important, people can easily fall into low-value jobs.
Remember the familiar scene: you are busy all day responding to other people’s requests, keep working, race against time, multitasking, trying to complete all the tasks, then cross off your to-do list . However, after the end of the day, you find that all the time, effort and energy you invested in your day’s work have not paid off. When you are overwhelmed by work, it is difficult to have an objective view of what is high value.
Ernest Hemingway once said: “Never take action as action” (“Never mistake motion for action”)
In the work, there are a lot of things that take up our time, but in the end we can give us very little reward. One of the secrets of making real progress every day is simple – get rid of low-value tasks and replace them with high-value, productive actions.
High-value output means that you have to allocate most of your time to tasks that can “bring valuable results.”
Cal Newport believes that if we want to continue to achieve higher levels of achievement, we must constantly produce high-value results. This is a real improvement in life and work.The only way.
Many people spend a lot of time on work that has no impact on the final goal. I have been doing low-value work.
According to London Business School professor Julian Birkinshaw and PA Consulting Group productivity expert Jordan Cohen, “Knowledge employees spend a lot of time (average 41%) In activities where personal satisfaction is low and others are competent.” Those who focus on low-value tasks will choose to spend time on tasks that make them feel busy and important.
Low-value activities keep you busy, but they also make it impossible for you to do real work. Low-value work is necessary, but it doesn’t matter. These tasks are easily abandoned, delegated, or outsourced, and have no effect on your expected outcome.
Responding to someone’s notifications will not help you complete your day’s goals. Studies have shown that people with an average of more than 23 minutes after a minor disturbance can fully recover their attention.
Viewing WeChat messages and emails will lead your thoughts elsewhere , causing ideas that are not related to the task, even if you do not reply, it will interfere.
Most emails will distract us from high-value work. Email will force you to become passive, not active, and you need to schedule your day according to the needs of others. The inbox is stuffed with things to deal with, calls to urgently respond, things to read, and more. This is a messy, stressful and time consuming act.
Unsubscribe: How to Eliminate Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, Complete Real Work (Unsubscribe: How to Kill EmailJocelyn K. Glei, author of Anxiety, Avoid distraction, and Get Real Work Done, says that while viewing e-mails all day may make you feel more efficient, the opposite is true. .
In an interview with The Telegraph, Joslin said: “…the job mail should be short. If something in the mail can’t be solved quickly, it is recommended to have a meeting or go straight to the colleague’s office. Plan at the table.” This way you can free yourself and others from annoying emails, as these emails can drag down an entire afternoon and bother all relevant people.
We also need to learn to delegate tasks, or to automate and batchize some tasks, find ways to shorten the time to complete low-value work, and free up time for high-value work. This ensures that you don’t waste your energy on unimportant tasks.
Beware of “time bullies.” When you are at work or should be working, your time is for work. We must learn to protect our working hours. Say “no” to irrelevant things. Don’t be disturbed by things you don’t have time to do.
For those urgent but not important tasks, we can determine an exact time to process. When you limit your time on low-value tasks, you are also forcing yourself to focus more on actions that really contribute to progress.
To produce high-value results, we prioritize assigning time to tasks that ultimately produce valuable results.
To do more high-value work, you should look at what you want Do things and see if they match the goals you want to achieve. Choose what you think is the most important thing, make room for them, and work toward your most important, measurable, and achievable goals.
Optimization time will give you more time to focus on important things and do more in less time. No matter what career you are in, avoid busy work that is worthless to your work, vision or long-term goals.
Translator: Jane
Recommended reading: To be successful, more important than hard work is: sleep
Recommended reading: A time management method that doubles your income
Recommended reading: We live in the “Python era”