Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More

1. One goal.
Set a single goal that you want to accomplish this year -- I know that we probably want to do 12 goals, but it's too difficult to maintain your focus on more than one goal, and it diffuses your energy. Pick one goal for the next 12 months, and then a single 3-6 month goal that will lead to your 12-month goal. Then choose something you can accomplish within the next 1-2 weeks that will lead to the 3-6 month goal. Now focus on that short-term goal, giving it all your energy, and when it's achieved, set your next short-term goal until you've accomplished your medium-term goal.
2. Find your passion. All the rest of these tips are just window dressing if you find work you're passionate about. If you're not in a job you love, start your quest to find that job now. You don't need to quit your current job right away, but start doing some research on the web, think about what you're really interested in, talk to others who are doing what you want to do. Make this your One Goal for this year, and it could turn out to be your best year ever.
   
3. Work from home.
   

4. Come in early. If telecommuting isn't your thing, try getting to work 30-60 minutes before the rest of the crowd. Or even more. This might require you to learn to wake up early, but the benefits are many: you skip the morning traffic, you can work without distractions until the rest of your coworkers come in, you can get a jump start on your day, you can be ahead of the crowd and get more done. Getting an early start is a great way to start your work day and to become more productive.

5. Work 4 days. If you can control your work schedule (or can convince your boss to change it), try working fewer days. Working four days a week not only gives you an additional day off, but it forces you to be more productive in the days you do work. Think about it: if you knew that you had to get your work done by the end of Thursday, you will focus more on what really needs to get done, and goof off less too. What would you do less? Email? Read stuff on the Internet? Chat? Play solitaire? Those unimportant things fade away when your time is limited.

6. Work 6-hour days. Same concept as above, but reconfigured. Personally, I'd choose the 4-day workweek, but that can't work for everyone. Get in early and leave even earlier -- imagine the 7 a.m.-1 p.m. work day. With focus, it can be done.

7. Work 20 hours.

8. MITs. Each day, make a list with only three items: the three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Make at least one of them related to your One Goal. The others might be something you've been procrastinating on, or a big project that's due today, or something similar. Ideally, these MITs are really important tasks -- ones that will gain you longer-term recognition or income. Now focus on these, making sure to accomplish them. It's best to do your MITs first thing in the morning, before you get interrupted by a bunch of other things. If you do only three things today (you could choose more or less than three MITs, but I've found that three works for me), make it your MITs.

9. Batch process. There are usually a bunch of smaller tasks that we have to do that aren't that important. Email, paperwork, phone calls, things like that. Instead of doing those little things throughout the day, giving you busywork to interrupt and distract you from your important tasks, batch them together and do them at one set time each day. Write these tasks down on a small list, and with an hour left in your work day (or whatever works for you), start processing them as quickly as possible, ticking them off your list.

10. Telecommute 1 day a week. If you can't convince your boss to let you work completely from home, try one day a week. You could start out by calling in sick, but still getting a lot done from home. Or tell him you want to give it a try, just for one day this week, because you think it will make you more productive.

11. Freelance as a 2nd job.
    

12. Brown bag it.

13. Cycle to work.

14. Take high-profile projects. If you just take the grunt work, your boss might or might not appreciate it, but it certainly won't make you a star and you won't go very far. Instead, volunteer for the big projects, the ones that will make a name for both you and your company. If there aren't any available, make your own. Be sure you can do them well, but if you do, these projects will have a huge impact on your life. The tasks on these projects should be your MITs every day. If you take on high-impact projects, you can be more productive working a half day than if you worked 10 hours a day on tasks that won't matter next week.

15. Automate your business.

16. Bank your raise.

17. Clear your desk. A messy desk might be the sign of a creative mind, but in my experience (I've tried both messy and now clean desks), having a desk that's clean is much more calming, much more productive, and more organized. Most importantly, it reduces visual clutter and allows you to focus on the task at hand, increasing your productivity. Clearing your desk can take a chunk of time, but it's worth it: take all your papers (everything!) and put them in your inbox, or in a pile if they don't fit. Now process through them, one at a time, from top to bottom, filing, acting upon, delegating, trashing each document or noting tasks on a to-do list for later (and filing the to-be-acted-upon documents in an action folder). Remove other knick knacks and put any office supplies or tools in a drawer (and empty out your drawers while you're at it). From here on out, everything goes in your inbox, and you process it to empty every day using the steps outlined here.

18. Granularize. If a project or task seems too intimidating, split it into smaller tasks, and just focus on the first task you need to do. For example, instead of "Research report", just find three sources on the Internet. You can read each of these sources and take notes after that.

19. Delegate.

20. Eliminate. Your to-do list is a mile long. You'll never be able to do all those things. Cut it in half by crossing out stuff that doesn't really need to be done, or delegating others. And from that list, just choose the three most important things that you need to do today. Get in the habit of eliminating as many of the tasks and processes you normally do as possible, and your work life will be greatly simplified.

21. Clear distractions. In addition to clearing your desk, you can allow yourself to focus more by eliminating all distractions: email or IM alerts, Twitter, other websites (in fact, turn off the Internet), phones, visual clutter around you or on your walls. Wear headphones so your coworkers interrupt you less, or let them know that you're not available right now. Focus more, and you'll get more done.

22. Kill meetings. One of the biggest time-wasters in our work lives. Most of the time, a meeting could have been accomplished with an email or a phone call. Beg out of meetings (or if you're the boss, eliminate them) by claiming you have a project due that you need to work on. Then be very productive during the time you would be at the meeting, and show your boss how much you got done.

23. Email once a day. Don't do email throughout the day. Set one time during the day to process email, then crank through it, getting your inbox to empty (use the same steps in "clear your desk" above). If you check email throughout the day, you are allowing yourself to be distracted and at the mercy of anyone who sends you a request. And by sending out emails all day, you are generating even more responses in return, compounding the problem. Batch process, and you will get a lot more done. Same applies to reading your RSS feeds and checking your blog stats and reading your forums.

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