All right, you've made it to lesson three managing your work life. Hopefully by now you're starting to feel like you have a bit more control over your schedule and your time and not to mention your life. Are you feeling a little relief yet? I hope so. So either way, we're going to continue using some of the pressure here by helping you become more effective at work. This lesson is all about streamlining your work day.

So you can have more of an impact at work, feel more effective and more valuable. Do what needs to be done so you can get home to your family, avoid working overtime at night, and kind of just have that sense of peace that comes with knowing you focused on the most important things throughout your day and didn't let the unimportant distractions get in your way. So in this lesson, we're going to focus on three different goals. Of course, as always, number one, we're going to go over some new texts and techniques that you can use to become more efficient and productive in your work. We're also going to start to set the stage to pull back a little from your job so it no longer controls every waking hour of your day. We'll talk a little bit about how to remain valuable to your team without being chained to your desk, your laptop or your mobile device.

And you'll also use what you learned about boundaries in the last lesson to reclaim control over your work life. And then our third goal is to learn the best way to transfer your attention back towards your family without losing ground at work. I want you to remain effective in your role, while you're moving your focus back towards your family and other important activities to you. So before we get into the main strategies that will help you get organized and save time at work. Let's start with some of the most common myths that come up about work these days. I find that these are some of the most common reasons why people just keep taking on more and more work, which usually just leads to chaos and overwhelm.

So Myth number one is that people equate busy with effective or important, but here's the truth. Busy and important are completely different things. And honestly, the more rushed and behind you are, the less likely you are to be affected. If you're constantly trying to keep up with an out of the out of control workload, you're probably not doing your best work. humans aren't built to focus on more than one thing at a time, you're probably missing things or doing things the last minute or letting little things fall through the cracks. If nothing else, you aren't giving yourself enough time to think proactively and make sure that the steps you're taking are the best ones in that moment.

If this sounds familiar, I'm here to tell you that it's not really it's not only okay, but it's important to start addressing your workload. Myth number two is that I can't complain at least I have a job. So ever since the economy crashed back in, you know, late 2000 2008 timeframe. A lot of companies went through a massive layoff period, and some continue to do so. them but that really just increased the workload for anyone who was left at their job. So if you were one of those people who were left after that process, you might feel lucky just to have a job.

But at this point, you've probably been working double or triple time trying to keep up with what It should be several different people's jobs. So if you value your job, it's actually in your best interest to have a frank conversation with your boss about what you're doing and what's on your plate so that you can be as effective as possible. At some point, you're going to miss something which just puts your job and your reputation at risk. And this conversation will look different for everyone, obviously, depending on their industry, their level of employment. In fact, you might even be the boss in which you're going to In which case, you're going to have to have a discussion with your clients or your customers. And also your work objectives are going to come into that too.

So just keep in mind that if you're afraid to speak up about your overall overwhelming workload, let me see if I can say that about your overwhelming workload. It you may not be, as you know, at a disadvantage as you would think. The third myth that I see a lot is my boss is gonna think I'm a slacker, or I can't handle my job or I'm a squeaky wheel if I speak up about my workload. So no matter what it's a good practice to have an ongoing An open discussion with your boss about your workload, the more familiar that they are with you with what you handle on a typical work week, the more they're going to trust when you tell them that you're truly getting overwhelmed. So if your boss is a good manager, they're going to want to help you do your best work.

And it's in their best interests and the company's best interests to support you in doing the best job you can do. If you never speak up, though, it's going to be hard for them to help you. Now I understand not every boss is a good boss. And sometimes there is that pressure at work. But for most of us, I think we can start this conversation with our boss in a way that is beneficial for us, but also for them and kind of framing in a way that makes it worth their while to listen. So if you decide to address your workload with your boss, or if you are the boss with you know your team or your clients or customers, here's some of the basic issues that you might want to bring up in that conversation.

So number one is the best way to evaluate competing priorities. If you have a variety of different expectations. Coming at you all at once. It is entirely appropriate for you to reach out to your manager, or clients or customers and let them know how you're prioritizing everything. Give them an opportunity to change the priority if some things is actually more urgent than the others. But laying it all out there for them is going to help them understand what you're really juggling.

And it's going to help them be more realistic about what they're expecting of you. Number two is whether there's anything you can delegate or eliminate from your workload right now. So utilize any available reset resources that you have at your disposal. There are probably people around you who could help take some of the strain off of your schedule. And maybe you aren't used to delegating much, but now might be a really good time to start learning how to do it effectively. Also, it's possible that something on your plate isn't even all that important.

So if you're looking at your task list and something seems like it's a big waste of your time, you might want to bring that up. Don't just do things because someone has asked you to start thinking really critically about where your time is going. And whether there's a better use of your time. Also, you can ask your boss what other resources might be available to help you and to meet all of your goals and deadlines. So there are usually assistance or different departments or maybe even an external contractor who could help help you do what you need to do. The odds are good that if you're doing a lot of the work, and it's not entirely within your specialty, you're wasting time.

So if that's the case, go ahead and ask your boss if you can outsource certain items to other people so that you can have more time to focus on what you're really good at, and we're actually hired to do. You may have answers to these questions already. But if that is the case, then that's awesome. But if not, go ahead and be proactive, to figure out a way to minimize your workload without having to involve your boss. Start out answering these questions for yourself and come up with some proposals or solutions that you can bring to them. Don't just go to them and say I'm overloaded and you need to fix it.

And if you're really stuck, a good boss is going to hopefully be a resource for you to utilize. So that you can help solve the problem. Because at the end of the day, that's the goal is to make it so that you're working as effectively as possible. So after you've negotiated your work scheduled down to something a little more reasonable, I want to go over a few tips to help you make the absolute most of your day. So you can download. But before we get into this, go ahead and download the top 10 tips to increase efficiency at work tip sheet that I created, which includes a lot of different strategies.

But here are a few of the most useful ones that I've found. So number one is focusing on the first 30 minutes of your day to get organized and set your priorities and then also save the last 30 minutes of your day to wrap up anything before you head out of the office so it doesn't follow you home. So I know that these this is probably a really common tip that people bring up but I don't know a lot of people who actually do it I see instead a lot of people really pressured to get out of of the office at the end of the day, and they're just trying to wrap things up. And oftentimes, you know, things are even getting wrapped up. So they're kind of finishing their workday in the middle of a project. So, personally, for me, I end up kind of not answering my phone, not answering my emails, not taking on any new projects, I, I leave that last 30 minutes just for me, no matter what's going on.

And if I can't wrap something up, before, you know, four o'clock, which is about 30 minutes before I usually leave the office, I don't take it on, I figure out a way to outsource it to someone else or negotiate to have it done the next day. And sometimes it doesn't always work. I have to work on something later on or rearrange something. But leaving as much as you can that first and last 30 minutes of your day just for you to get organized and to figure out what you need to prioritize. It's going to help a lot. The second tip is to become militant about the projects that you take on.

And I mean militant, get incredibly picky about what you say yes to. This isn't just you know, it's not a dumping ground for you. You are an You have good valuable skills, you are providing a service and you want to do that in the best possible way. So start saying no to the things that you're not great at, or that really shouldn't be even on your plate, make, you know, start letting other people step up. If you've been the person, that's always the go to resource, and you ended up having everything on your plate that other people probably could be doing, start looking at that and start handing things back to other people that they can do, and reserve your time for the things that only you can do. And that only you do well.

The next tip is to try batching similar activities. If you have a lot of different tasks that are similar in nature, go ahead and schedule a certain time during the week when you can do that activity all at once, instead of trying to keep up with it throughout the week. It takes a lot of energy for your brain to refocus on a new task after working on a different task for a period of time. So the more you can go through this process of refocus, the more you can avoid going through that process of refocusing. Which is called context switching, the more energy you're going to save, because your brain doesn't have to change gear so often. The fourth tip is to avoid perfectionism.

So this one might be as a pricing tip for you, for especially those of you that are listening who are perfectionists because you know, you like good quality work, you have high standards, and I totally get that. But go ahead and check out that section in the tip sheet specifically, if this is something that you you know, if you can relate to that, trying to do everything perfectly, is really limiting your efficiency at work. And I know it sounds weird, but at some point done is better than perfect. And if you're somebody who is trying to just, you know, dot every single I and cross every single team, make sure that everything is as perfect as possible. You're probably, you know, wasting time towards the end of a project when it would probably be fine and you can hand it off. In it that's going to be something that's going to help it's going to prevent you from being as effective as you could possibly be, so just take a look at that section.

I know it's gonna be a hard sell probably for some of you who really are perfectionist, but take it from me as a recovering perfectionist myself, you really can, you know, kind of limit some of the stuff that you're doing at the end of a project to make it absolutely perfect, it's probably fine. And you can probably just move on to the next. So those are just a few of the tips that I have listed to help you increase your efficiency at work. Go ahead and take a look at the whole tip sheet for other resources as well. And then what I want you to do after you go through that list is choose just one or maybe two strategies to implement right away, start with one, maybe add a second if it sounds interesting or something that would really work for you. But get that is part of your routine, start working on that.

After that does become a part of your routine, then go ahead and add another and then another one until you've implemented all of them. So this lesson was pretty straightforward. I want to To give you a little rest after the last lesson, because I know that was pretty in depth. So for this lesson, we're going to talk about a couple of different success tips that you can keep in mind as you go through the worksheet. The first success tip that I have is to make a real effort to begin to change your habits at work, I want you to start implementing what you're learning. If you're feeling overwhelmed, or overworked or overburdened at work, it's probably time to start getting on top of things.

And remember, you have the power to change your life, you just need to start making more intentional decisions and following that up with the right actions. The next success tip I have is to work with your boss or your co workers to create a more reasonable schedule. You really aren't all alone out there. There are a lot of people who can help so don't be afraid to reach out and staying in your own little workplace bubble isn't going to do anyone in any good in it just ends up leading you down a destructive path. So start changing that pattern now and start working with the people around you to ease some of the pressure on yourself. And then finally, if you're the boss, I want you to start figuring out ways to outsource different tasks to other people so that you aren't constantly drowning in work.

I know that there's a lot of responsibility in owning your own company or running a team of people. But you're not a victim either. Come up with some new ways to utilize the people that you have working for you. And if you don't have anyone on your staff, if you're just working on your own and your own company, by yourself, make a decision to change that. There are a lot of creative and inexpensive ways to hire someone with talents that can complement your own. So start looking into your options and give yourself some relief.

Alright, so let's go over a few pitfalls that you're going to want to try to avoid as you increase your efficiency at work. The first pitfall is thinking it's easier to just work faster and harder rather than slowing down and trying to find real solutions to your workload issues. I totally understand and can be intimidating and overwhelming to think about doing things differently. But thinking about increasing your pace is Thinking that increasing your pace is going to solve your problems is a total pitfall. In fact, increasing your pace is really only going to lead to burnout and health issues and stress and exhaustion, which is absolutely no fun. So stop complaining about trying to survive in your life.

Stop complaining about your workload and instead start making decisions that are actually going to help you thrive in your role at work. The second pitfall I want you to avoid is getting to your wit's end and then confronting your boss without doing any footwork beforehand. So employers appreciate productivity and organization, obviously. So get your ducks in a row before you seek out help from your boss, take an inventory of what you can handle and what you're proposing to hand off before you have your conversation. Having these solutions prepared ahead of time is going to show that you're taking responsibility for your work and that you're proactive in solving your own problems. The third pitfall that I really want you to try to avoid is thinking that you can please all of the people all of the time, and so this is obviously a big theme in this whole program, but It comes into play here for sure.

So it's it's simply not possible. And I'm sure that you've found by now that it really all it does is create chaos in your own life. Everybody else gets their needs met, or maybe they don't even get their needs met. But at the end of the day, you're the one who's suffering. So be aware of your tendency if you haven't to feel like you need to be the only one who's helping everybody all the time. Use your personal values profile and your personal priorities profile to start determining what you should take on rather than letting everyone else's expectations of you drive your life.

So there was one particular book I wanted to share in this lessons recommended resources section. That book is so good they can't ignore you why skills Trump passion in your quest for work? So I liked this book, because I've heard you know, so many times throughout my life, follow your passion, follow your passion and the money will follow. But on those days when I don't feel particularly passionate about my job, it just feels kind of like a grind. I've got felt like I was missing out, I felt like I wasn't moving toward anything meaningful. But this book explains actually the most successful people in the world didn't necessarily follow their passion.

Instead, they focused on improving their skills to such a high degree that other people just couldn't ignore them. At the end of the day, the quality of your work, the trust you establish with those people around you and the in your ability to manage your life effectively is what's going to lead to professional success and personal fulfillment. So it's not as sexy as following your passion. But those deliberate day to day actions are actually going to take you much further in your career, then you get the new thing. Okay, so the next step is to download those top 10 tips to increase efficiency tip sheet, and then decide on one or two strategies to go ahead and implement right now. And then after it becomes a part of your team, again, pick up another one and add it in.

And then if you have other strategies that you use to increase efficiency, let us know please share in the Facebook community You know, have a couple here, I couldn't list everything. There are hundreds of different tips out there life hacks is, you know, an, it's a very popular thing for a reason. There are so many different ways that you can save time. I wanted to give you a few things to get you started. But there are so many different ideas out there. So let us know what you do.

Let us know what kind of works for you what things you do that work well in your workplace, share it with everyone else so that we can kind of all benefit from that. And then I will see you in the next lesson.