If you’ve ever rolled your eyes when someone mentioned ‘feng shui’ or scoffed outloud when you heard Marie Kondo had written a fourth book about tidying up<\/a>, you should know there’s real science behind it all<\/a>: human beings just operate better when things are organised.<\/p>\n And not only with our physical space either. Stress and disorganised thinking can’t lead us to productivity<\/strong>. We can’t feel on top of an unwieldy todo list that might be a week’s worth of work or a month’s, and all of it due… some time.<\/p>\n If you want to get more organised at work, clear your desk, take a deep breath, and see if any of these ideas spark joy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In big tech companies like Facebook and Amazon, engineers aren’t given tasks that will take more than a day or two to finish. That’s because it becomes impossible for people to judge<\/a> how long tasks much bigger than that will be – which makes it impossible for the business to prioritise work, commit to deadlines, or plan their roadmap.<\/p>\n But some tasks are going to take more time. (Like rebranding into Meta!) When that happens, the tasks get broken down into smaller and smaller pieces of the overall job, turning one big task into dozens of smaller mini-tasks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It might sound like breaking down every job into a series of small steps is time-consuming, but being able to plan and strategise about the work winds up being more time-efficient in the long run<\/a>, since any blockers become apparent right away and no time gets wasted going down the wrong path.<\/p>\n Not to mention the psychological boost that comes from ticking off a bunch of small, achievable tasks every day, rather than having one giant, unfinished task hanging above your head for months.<\/p>\nCreate mini-tasks<\/h2>\n
Time blocking<\/h2>\n