If you could get eight hours of work done in six hours, you would have two more hours to do billable work.

Or you could go home early.

Either way, working faster is your friend.

There are many strategies for getting things done in less time. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Single-task. Doing one thing at a time allows you to get things done faster because you’re able to focus and work at a deeper level. You’re also not wasting time “task switching”.
2. Time-block. Scheduling blocks of time on your calendar to work on important tasks or groups of tasks forces you to work on those tasks.
3. Shorter deadlines. Parkinson’s Law says, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” which means you can usually get things done in less time simply by allotting less time to complete them.
4. Do your most important tasks first. Get your most important or difficult tasks done when your energy is highest. You’ll be better able to concentrate and work faster.
5. Plan your day in advance. At the start of the day, or even better, the night before, plan your day so you know what you’re going to do and can move from task to task without having to figure out what to do next.
6. Divide big tasks into smaller sub-tasks. You’ll procrastinate less when you “only” have to do something that takes a few minutes. You’ll also get a dopamine fix each time you complete a sub-task and check it off your list, making it more likely that you will continue working until you’re done.
7. Eliminate bottlenecks. Examine all the steps and identify those that slow you down or send you off on tangents. Fix these by finding alternative methods or delegating those steps to others.
8. Gamify your tasks. Promise yourself a reward for achieving important milestones–making twenty calls, working for twenty minutes, or completing 2000 words, for example.
9. Take breaks. When you’re “on a roll” (“in a state of flow”), keep going. Lose yourself in the activity. Otherwise, to avoid mental burnout, take a five-minute break every half hour or so. Clear your mind, stretch your legs, and hydrate, before you go back at it.
10. Done is better than perfect. Give yourself permission to do a “bad” first draft or first iteration. You will often find that its “good enough” and if it isn’t, you’ll have time to fix it. It’s easier to fix something that’s done than to do something from scratch.

Okay, one more: Dictation.

When I was practicing and had staff, I dictated and recorded my work product and had someone else type it. Today, I often use text-to-speech software to get first drafts done in a fraction of the time.

How about you? What are your favorite ways to work faster?

I watched a video about productivity. The speaker suggested that we identify our “A” work, that is, what we do best, and do more of it. We should do less of our “B” and “C” work, and avoid doing anything we might rate a “D” or “F”.

Write down ten or twenty activities you do in your business and grade them. Assign an “A” to your best work, a “B” to work that might not be your best but that you usually do well enough, and so on.

The more “A” work you do, she said, the better, suggesting that you will be happier and so will your clients or customers.

But is that true?

What if our “A” work is something we don’t enjoy? I’m good at making cold calls but I don’t like it. I certainly don’t want to do more of it.

Sometimes, we do things we’re good at simply because we have to. But we don’t want to do them any more than we have to. Hiring and firing come to mind.

There’s another element missing from the equation: value. What if our “A” work isn’t an important part of the job?

You may be good at editing videos, for example, and enjoy it, but if you don’t create them often or they don’t bring in a lot of business, finding ways to do more editing isn’t going to help you build your practice. What’s more, your editing skills aren’t your highest and best use. You could pay someone $30 an hour to do it while you earn $300 an hour doing legal work.

As you go through your list of work activities, assign a letter grade for all three elements: what you do best, what you enjoy, and what contributes the most value to you or to your clients.

Ideally, you’ll find some activities that all get all “A”s.

What do you do with the rest? Eliminate them, if possible. Delegate them. Or, if they are necessary and they can’t be done by anyone else (be honest), see if you can do them less often or more quickly so you’ll have more time to do your triple-A work.

I’m good at showing you how to get more referrals

What if you woke up one day, looked at your to-do list and there was nothing on it. No tasks, no projects, nothing to do or update or learn–nothing. Bupkis. A blank slate.

Relax, it’s never going to happen. But imagine for a moment that it did.

It would be weird, wouldn’t it? Since pre-school, we’ve always had things to do. Now, nothing? It would be frightening. And exciting. You can do whatever you want.

If you had to fill your list from scratch, what would you put on it? Tasks and projects, big and small, now or next–what would you put on your list?

When I began my recent “Kanban” task management experiment, that’s what I asked myself. I emptied my head and wrote down everything I could think of. Then I went through my lists in Evernote and added more items.

Well guess what? Between my “deferred” and “backlog” and “ready” lists, I have a grand total of 59 tasks and projects. Comparing this to the many hundreds in Evernote, it’s shocking.

When I look at my new list, I get a little nervous, thinking I must be forgetting things. But I also feel good. Like I’m starting a new adventure.

Starting over is liberating. It gives you a fresh perspective on your priorities. And, like cleaning out closets and paring down to the essentials, it makes room for new and better.

Of course, I’m not done. I haven’t gone through everything. Not even close. My Someday/Maybe list alone has hundreds of additional ideas.

But I’ve got to say, so far, my little experiment is a huge success. I look forward to looking at my options. I enjoy choosing–and doing–the things on my list. And, I’m getting a lot done.

Come on in. The waters fine.

Now, I’m not suggesting you jettison whatever it is you use to collect and manage your tasks and projects unless you want to. I suggest you experiment, like I am, and start some new lists.

If you use a new app or system, do like I did and start adding the most obvious or pressing matters. If you use the same app, move everything to a single (temporary) folder or file and start adding things back.

If your lists have grown too big and unwieldy, if you find yourself ignoring many entries (like the hundreds of Someday/Maybe items in my system), if you find yourself slacking off from a weekly review, this might be just the thing to jump-start the new, better organized and much more relaxed you.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.