5 Great Tools to Simplify Your Working Life

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer

Working life is stressful. To minimize workload and to streamline your work, employ these 5 great tools to simplify your working life. 

 1. Year planner: This is a tool to help you to identify the goals of the company and outline the analysis, strategies, and planning required to achieve these goals. The year planner gives you an overview of the tasks one year ahead of you. By looking at the planner you will stay focus while you do your day-to-day planning. 

 2. Follow-up file or tickler file: This is a file that is divided into 2 parts, one part is divided into 31 sections for each day of the month and another part has 12 sections for each month in a year. Using the year planner as a guide you can slot all the information into their respective months and those tasks for the current month into their respective dates. At any time any new assignments or dates to remember can be quickly kept in a specific month or a specific date in the current month. Most important of all, make it a habit to look at the file first thing in the morning to know the tasks for the day. As soon as the tasks for the day are done it should be transferred back to the appropriate month to be used again next year. At the end of each month remember to transfer the documents for the following month to the current month into their specific dates. 

 3. Daily to-do list: By looking at your reminder file you know what you have to do for the day and other items in the to-do list that you have written in the previous day. The to-do list helps you to focus on the few important tasks you need to do for the day. 

 4. Checklist: When you have a checklist in place nothing is left out. Again, you don’t have to resort to your memory. As an example, a checklist for annual external audit will assist you to have all the documents ready for the audit. 

 5. Memo pads. You should carry one in your pocket to record ideas that suddenly occur in your mind and also things to do later. Another memo pad should be at the telephone set to take down messages and act on it later when you are busy doing something else. 

 The take-home message of using all the tools is that you should not use your memory to remember all those things you need to do. Avoid clutter in your mind. An efficient and effective system will simplify your working life and you get things done with the help of all these tools. Instead, use your mind to imagine, create, and come out with great ideas.