Working effectively: how do you get your work done when it’s always busy? (13 tips)

Busy, busier, busiest is the norm. But even if you always keep up the pace of work, you can end the day with the feeling that you have not achieved much. The problem is not always in planning, but more in where exactly you invest your time. Working effectively means that you actually get done what you wanted to do. How do you do that, even when ad-hoc things are flying around your ears? As a busy freelancer, I struggled with this enormously during my first 2 years as an entrepreneur. I now organize my working days differently and as a result I get more done without working harder. These are my 13 tips for working more effectively.

What does effective working mean?

Working effectively means that you achieve your intended goals and achieve results. It is therefore different from working efficiently (getting as much done as possible in the time you have). Working effectively is mainly about using your time meaningfully and focusing on the right things. So not on all kinds of unimportant side questions, but on things that are really important.

Working effectively is not about being busy and working hard, but mainly about working smarter.

A successful workday is not necessarily a workday where you frantically run from meeting to meeting, answer every email within 30 minutes and are always available to help with questions. A workday is mainly successful if you have actually done something about that one big project that has to be finished this week. Or if you have made progress on the task that you have been postponing for a while. And if you do not get distracted too much by phone calls, emails and everything else that tries to steal your attention.

Working effectively = focus on what is really important

Working more efficiently is perhaps even easier than working effectively. We all know tricks to save time or get your work done faster. But the problem is not always in your work pace and planning. Nowadays, distractions are perhaps an even bigger problem. When I became a brand-new freelancer 5 years ago, I was busy all day with apps, emails, questions and much more. As a result, working through the evenings was almost a given. Yes, I was busy. But I had to work long days to actually get what I had planned done.

After a lot of stumbling and getting up again, I now approach it differently. I no longer blindly do everything that comes along at that moment, but start the day with a clear plan.

Working effectively means that you critically determine where you focus your attention on a workday. You don’t try to do everything that comes your way, but look more critically at what really needs to be done and what can be done later. Of course, you can’t completely determine your own agenda and sometimes you have to put things aside to help someone else. But if the ad-hocs only take up 1-2 hours of your day instead of 4 hours, that’s already a gain.

How do you do that, work effectively in a world full of distractions and “Oh, can you also…” questions? These are 13 tips that work well for me.

1. At the beginning of the day, think of 2 or 3 major priorities

We often start the day with a very long to-do list. It contains everything from 5-minute tasks (such as paying an invoice or emailing someone back) to projects that take at least 4 hours. When I first started my business, this was also my planning tactic. Only it didn’t work at all. Small tasks are of course nice and manageable and quickly done. So I often tackled those first. Answering an email in between? Done in no time, I can do it! But if you’re not careful, your entire day can be spent on small things or unexpected tasks in between. But that’s not always the priority.

To protect myself from these kinds of actions, I start each day with 2 or 3 priorities . I mark the tasks that I have to have completed by the end of the day. I also want to complete the other tasks on my to-do list. But if that doesn’t work, I can postpone them. The priorities do have to be completed. That helps me enormously to be less distracted by small, simple tasks.

2. Make smart use of your most productive times

You probably know for yourself at what times of the day you work fastest and when you can’t get going. Is the morning your hyper-productive moment? Or do you really push through at the end of the day? Make smart use of this by tackling your procrastination-worthy, cumbersome projects during your productive phases.

For example, I am at my sharpest in the morning. I always try to tackle the big priority tasks before lunch. I know that I won’t get much done if I have to start at 3:30. That’s why I postpone tasks that require little creativity and focus to the end of the day. Around that time, I think about interview questions, answer my emails, send invoices or edit a text.

It is also useful to know about yourself: when are you most creative? Some tasks do not require concentration, but rather creativity. Productivity expert Mark Tigchelaar calls this the distinction between ‘flow’ (being creative and coming up with good ideas all the time) and ‘focus’ (working on something with concentration). For example, if you have to come up with ideas for a new project or work out a text, this requires a dose of creativity. It is therefore good to partly align your working day with your most creative times.

3. Break down tasks and keep them manageable

My biggest pitfall as a starting entrepreneur was that I made endless to-do lists and described very vaguely what I had to do. For example, I noted ‘write texts for website client A’. But yes, that is a project of about 15 hours. What exactly am I going to do for that? When is the task officially completed? I have now realized that it works better to divide projects into tasks of a maximum of about 2 hours.

For example, when I am working on an e-book for a client, I often split it up into 4 tasks. First, I do research for the e-book. Then I write part 1, later part 2 and at another time part 3. That way, it doesn’t feel like one big task that I am bored with after 4 hours. By taking on a small part of this project at a time, it remains manageable and I also know exactly what I have to work on that day.

4. When problems occur, ask yourself, “Does this have to be done now?”

No matter what kind of work you do, things always come up. You receive an email waiting for your response. Someone calls you with a request. Your manager asks if you can think along about something. And of course, sometimes you have to drop something to help someone else or to solve something. But very often it is really not necessary for you to take action at the last minute.

With every notification that comes on your phone, with every email and also with every colleague who taps you on the shoulder, do you ask yourself: “Does this have to happen now?”. Do you have to answer an email right away or can that also be done in 3 hours? Do you have to put your computer on standby straight away to help your colleague or can you also indicate that you have time after lunch? And do you have to answer every phone call immediately or can you also let someone know that you will call them back about this tomorrow?

There are few situations that are truly urgent. If you work in intensive care as a doctor, then you do things that are absolutely urgent. If you are a website builder and your client’s site crashes, then you have to take action. If you are a real estate agent and suddenly see your client’s dream house, then that requires quick action. And if you work in the spokesperson department and there is a total PR crisis, then you have to pull out all the stops. But in many other cases, a few hours earlier or later really doesn’t matter.

5. Work Pomodoro-proof

The Pomodoro Method is a productivity technique that I learned about from the book ‘Ready at 3pm Every Day’. It basically involves working for 25 minutes straight without distractions or breaks, then taking a 5-minute break . You can also extend it to 50 minutes with 10-minute breaks. This is very helpful for working effectively, because it often takes 15-20 minutes to regain your focus. So if you’re reaching for your phone every 10 minutes, you’re never really focused.

On the other hand, working focused for an entire morning is pretty much impossible. So for me it works really well to limit my focus times. Regularly checking Instagram is still possible, but only during those 5-minute breaks. That way you can focus on a task without it feeling too exhausting.

6. Keep it distraction-free

Regardless of whether you start using Pomodoro or not, it’s always nice to not be distracted all the time. Distractions prevent you from getting what you want to get done. And distractions aren’t just all the tempting notifications your phone gives you. Things like work emails or questions from colleagues can also distract you from your big, important task.

7. When your inspiration runs out, stop struggling (and take a walk)

You can force concentration, but you can’t force creativity. Sometimes you may have to trudge through because there’s a deadline to meet. But generally speaking, staring at a blank screen hoping inspiration will come is a recipe for even more frustration. After all, a blank screen is anything but inspiring.

Do you notice that you are not succeeding and that you have run out of ideas? Then stop what you are doing and go outside, read a book or even walk to the coffee corner at the office. Any environment is more inspiring than a computer with a blank screen. Often, much more comes out of your head and hands than if you continue to stare at your screen without inspiration.

8. Do you ask yourself, “Does everything in your agenda add anything?”

Eisenhower came up with the handy Eisenhower Matrix to assess whether you are the one who should take on a task or not and, if so, when that should happen. He says you can divide tasks into 4 quadrants:

1. Important and urgent: tasks that need to be done quickly and that matter. –> quickly tackle them yourself
2. Important and non-urgent: tasks that absolutely matter, but are not urgent. –> put them on your to-do list to start working on soon
3. Unimportant and urgent: tasks that need to be done quickly, but are not important enough to tackle yourself. –> delegate or automate
4. Unimportant and not urgent: tasks that are not urgent and that are also not important to invest your time in. –> delete or postpone

Especially when you are in stress mode, it is often difficult to look at your agenda through a critical lens. With stress hormones raging through your body, everything seems important. But is that really the case? Often there are at least a few things that you can eliminate.

Often not everything in your weekly planning deserves a prominent place. If you look critically, you can always move a few things, cross them out or perhaps outsource them. To give a few examples:

• Should you go to that networking event? Wouldn’t your time be better spent on your existing clients?
• Is it necessary to visit that customer on the other side of the country or can you also make a digital appointment?
• Does it add anything to be active on social media? Do you have to be present on all platforms? Or can you better use that time for something else or reduce your social media use?
• Do you really need to have an update meeting with that one colleague every week? Can’t you make it every 2 weeks?
• Is it a must that you attend that meeting where 3 other colleagues are already present? Can you not cancel to work on that important deadline?
• Do you really need to pursue that website issue yourself? Can’t you leave it to your website host or to an IT person within the company?
• Isn’t it possible to move a deadline a little if it fits better with your other work? If you just make it a topic of discussion, more is possible than you think.

9. Speed ​​things up when you can do them faster

And I don’t mean that you’re banging on your keyboard like crazy to get letters on paper even faster. I mean working smarter instead of harder. Maybe you don’t have to do everything yourself. Sometimes handy apps, tools and software can help you out. And if it can’t be automated, maybe you can come up with a more convenient system yourself.

A few ideas:

• Do you often send the same type of email? Then create an email format that you adjust slightly per recipient. For example, I have a fixed format to plan an appointment with people I interview.
• Do you have a newsletter? Automate your mailings with a tool like MailerLite or MailChimp. They have endless handy gadgets, so you don’t have to create the same template over and over again, for example.
• Create a fixed quote template so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.
• For social media, consider using a tool like Later or Tailwind to schedule posts in advance. That way, you don’t have to surf to Instagram or Facebook for each post.
• Do you edit photos regularly? Create your own preset in Adobe Lightroom , so you can always apply the same “filter” to photos and perhaps only have to adjust something per photo.
• Use Canva instead of Photoshop for simple design tasks. In Canva you can do a lot of things with a click of a button without having to have any graphic knowledge yourself.
• Do you have to follow a set procedure? Create a checklist that you always go through when performing this type of task.
• Need inspiration for topics, titles, subject lines, project ideas or anything else? Let ChatGPT brainstorm with you.

10. Settle for 80% right (instead of 100%)

Perfectionism wastes a lot of unnecessary time. According to the Pareto principle, we often spend 20% of our time on the first 80% of a project, and then lose 80% of the time on the 20% that needs to be done. That ratio is a bit skewed.

Moreover, your own bar for the result is often much higher than where someone else would set the same bar for you. For example, you really don’t have to read your text 5 times before sending it to a colleague. One round of checking is probably enough. You certainly don’t have to carefully consider every word for your new LinkedIn post. Your first version of the post was probably already really good and came across as more spontaneous. And for that new website, you can continue to doubt the exact shade of light green in the header. But will a visitor really see the difference?

Of course, there are tasks that have to be perfect. As a copywriter, I find it important that I deliver my texts to the client without spelling errors. That’s what I invest my time in. But if I share a poem on Instagram, I don’t endlessly change the layout. Simply because I think it’s a waste to spend half an hour of my time on it, while probably no one will notice whether that one flower is on the left, right or in the middle.

Feel free to use your perfectionism for tasks where the details really matter. But let it go for all tasks that don’t have to be 100% perfect.

11. Take your breaks and take a day off sometimes

No one can be hyper-productive and super-creative for 8 hours. Taking a break from your work can actually help you rekindle your creativity and get back to work with renewed focus. Ideas often come faster than when you’re stuck behind your screen or rushing from meeting to meeting. Your productivity also increases after a short break.

Don’t forget to take your days off, even if you work for yourself. I was always really bad at that. Under the guise of “I just really like my job” (I think so too!) I often skipped vacation days and even in Airbnbs I often opened the laptop for work. I still check my mailbox on vacation, but I have promised myself to dutifully take vacation days 4 times a year. It is precisely those longer breaks that give you new energy to get work done again.

12. Sound the alarm in time if you are drowning in work

I myself worked in a workplace where there was always chaos. There was always more to be done than we had time available. Add to that a strong need to prove myself, and you can imagine that in no time I was juggling far too many balls. I tried to manage that myself for a while until I finally went to my manager. I indicated that there was too much work and that everything seemed important. She then thought along very well and helped me to push some tasks to the back burner.

And yes, I was lucky with a great manager at the time, and I know that not everyone is that lucky. But if you are drowning in work, a conversation with your manager is often a good first step. Talk about it and indicate that you have to drop something, but you don’t know exactly what. Who knows, adjustments may then be possible.

A thought that often helps me is this. Of course it sucks if you can’t help everyone. But if you drop out due to over-fatigue or burn-out symptoms, you can’t help anyone at all. So you better sound the alarm before that time.

Do you, like me, work as a freelancer? Then it can be very helpful to spar with a business coach or a fellow freelancer every now and then. Often someone else sees much better than you what you can cut and where time can be saved or priorities can be set differently. You don’t have to solve that puzzle on your own.

13. Do batching

And as a final tip for effective working, one of my personal favorites: batching. This means that you bundle similar tasks and do them one after the other. So you don’t make quotes 4x per week, but spend one half day making all 4 quotes. And you don’t write a social media post every day, but do that in one go for the entire week. For invoices, for example, you can also reserve 1 fixed half day per week.

Thanks to batching, you don’t have to “get into it” again and again. That helps enormously to achieve more results in the same amount of time. This way you achieve more results, but without working yourself to death.