5 Ways to Spend Less Time at Work

Tech­nol­ogy is sup­posed to increase our pro­duc­tiv­ity and reduce our work hours, yet many of us find the oppo­site to be true. We feel busier than ever, we stay at the office later than ever, and some­times we leave with­out fin­ish­ing a sin­gle task of sub­stance! Do these five things right now and go to your fam­ily on time tonight.

1. Clear off your desk. When your office is clut­tered, you’ll have the ten­dency to flut­ter around it aim­lessly, with­out a clear sense of where you should chan­nel your energy. I sug­gest think­ing of every new item arriv­ing on your desk as an insect that is infil­trat­ing your ter­ri­tory. Your job is to dis­pose of it as quickly as pos­si­ble, either by chuck­ing it in the near­est recy­cling bin or putting it in its proper place. The only mate­r­ial on your desk should per­tain to the task you’re work­ing on at that very minute.

2. Get Your Google on. Man­age your vir­tual world more time-efficiently by sign­ing up for Google’s suite of offer­ings. The prod­ucts, which include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Cal­en­dar and Google Sites, stream­line tasks and facil­i­tate col­lab­o­ra­tion among peo­ple work­ing together on projects. Many are free, and the data are safely backed up and avail­able every­where you have an Inter­net connection.

3. Don’t buy that plane ticket. Do you really need to meet with that sales rep on the other side of the world? Video call­ing ser­vices like Skype, which is free and avail­able in 28 lan­guages, allow you to con­nect visu­ally with any­one in the world via a web­cam and a micro­phone. And what about that train­ing sem­i­nar that will keep you out of the office for a week? Webi­nar tech­nol­ogy like Cisco WebEx allows for one-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion from an indi­vid­ual speaker to an audi­ence, and it can include polling and elec­tronic Q&A.

4. Order strat­egy – instead of donuts – for the team meet­ing. Do not call team meet­ings indis­crim­i­nately, and don’t put them on the cal­en­dar every week so that peo­ple take them for granted. Chit chat can be reserved for happy hour. We all know that real project work gets done out­side the con­fer­ence room and that we do not accom­plish things sim­ply by talk­ing about them. Please don’t usurp an hour of valu­able work time unless the meet­ing gen­er­ates impor­tant strat­egy, del­e­gates tasks to ensure team mem­ber account­abil­ity, or flags prob­lems so that they can be man­aged before they get out of hand.

5. Nip pro­cras­ti­na­tion in the bud. Raise your hand if you’ve spent weeks putting off a task that should only take a few hours because you know you don’t want to do it and fear you will spend too much time surf­ing the web and answer­ing your e-mail? Fight the urge to put things off by break­ing com­plex and over­whelm­ing projects down into smaller chunks with easy start­ing points. After each mini-task has been com­pleted, reward your­self with a spe­cial treat.

Alexan­dra Levit writes on work­place and career issues for the Wall Street Jour­nal and is the author of They Don’t Teach Cor­po­rate in Col­lege and How’d You Score That Gig?