Whether you’re looking for ways to be more on top of your everyday chores and duties, or whether you want to excel in your career, there are plenty of benefits to be had from finding ways to increase efficiency and reduce stress in various different dimensions of your life.
In fact, developing the ability to get more done in less time, and to find ways to make the process of getting things done less exhausting and disheartening, may even help you to find more time in your everyday life to spend on things that you find intrinsically meaningful, in a way that goes above and beyond simply paying the bills.
Of course, “efficiency” is always going to be largely context-dependent, and will have a lot to do with the specific area in which you are trying to increase efficiency. Stress, likewise, can be caused by a wide range of different things as well.
All the same, there are definitely certain basic principles that can have a pretty broad application when it comes to helping you to increase efficiency and reduce stress in general.
Here are a few of those principles.
Focus on doing a few core things right, instead of trying to do everything
First things first: it’s important to realize that no one can do an unlimited number of things, never mind being able to do an unlimited number of things well.
This is just as true in a personal context as it is in a professional one. Any time and energy that you spend developing one hobby or indulging in one pastime will be time and energy that you’re not spending on another hobby or pastime. And when it comes to your career, it should be pretty straightforward to see how it’s necessary to develop certain specializations, even though it’s great to be a skilled generalist to the best of your ability.
In many cases, simply trying to do too much can be a very stressful experience, and can also prevent you from properly achieving your full potential in any one area.
By focusing on doing just a few core things right, instead of trying to do everything, you may find that your stress levels decrease significantly and that you are better able to be effective at those things that you are actually deliberately focusing on.
Be on the lookout for new technologies and approaches that help to improve on an earlier way of doing things
As modern technologies and innovations continue to develop at a rapid pace, there are more and more different tools, techniques, and approaches out there that allow us to do all sorts of things we might already be doing, but in a more efficient, streamlined, and effective manner.
In a professional context, for example, copperflex foil stamping dies can help small business owners deal with tooling tasks more quickly and effectively than they otherwise would. And when it comes to dealing with things around the home, it might be that a new model of vacuum cleaner or dishwasher could make a real difference to how time-consuming your basic chores happen to be.
While some tools and technologies won’t make much of a difference, others can be revolutionary when it comes to their capacity for boosting your efficiency, and reducing how stressful certain tasks end up being.
Use a task management system that helps you to clearly identify what your next action is at any given time
One significant source of stress that many people end up contending with is simply not having a clear idea of what to do next, or the steps involved in getting a particular project or task completed.
One of the best ways of getting around this issue and simultaneously increasing efficiency while reducing stress is to use a task management system that helps you to clearly identify what your next action should be at any given time, while also allowing you to break down bigger projects into a variety of small steps.
Today, there are many different task and project management apps and proprietary systems out there. Finding one that works for you, and that provides clarity while reducing excess complexity, can be very beneficial.
Try to minimise distractions wherever possible
Psychological research seems to suggest that whenever we are distracted and have our attention divided between a number of different tasks at once, we naturally become more stressed while at the same time becoming less effective at any single thing we are trying to do.
Taking steps to try and directly minimize distractions wherever possible, while dealing with your everyday tasks and projects, can introduce a more “Zen” note to your day, while also making you more productive.