Next, analyze each task that's part of your job on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Begin by dividing up the tasks into four categories—necessary/enjoyable, necessary/annoying, unnecessary/enjoyable, and unnecessary/annoying. The annoying tasks are those that you don't like doing, but you take them on because they're an important part of your job, or because someone sought your help.
Focus your attention on the necessary tasks first. The core components of your job include all necessary tasks. Everything you do can't fall into this category. You must be able to differentiate between the importance of your tasks in order to manage your time.
Sort the necessary tasks by when they have to be done and how much time they require. If you have a critically important milestone two months down the road that you can accomplish in a few hours, it's simply not worth attacking until a few days before the due date. Group tasks according to whether they're recurring or singular, and whether they're due in less than a week, two weeks, a month, or later.
Then, schedule them on a monthly calendar, ensuring that you schedule no more than eight hours of tasks per day. When doing this, identify necessary tasks that should be logically grouped together. The goal is to be able to do the same or similar work that can apply to multiple tasks. For example, when writing up a status report for a customer, it's a good time to work on your monthly status report for your management too.
If the deadlines require substantially more than eight hours a day, you will have documented your workload. You may be able to get help, especially if you can explain specifically which parts of your job aren't getting done and how those tasks might be scheduled and distributed to others on your team. If you can't get help from your management, at least you will know that you have one of two choices—either accept long hours, or seek new employment.
The last step in the process is to feed back the actual times into your schedule to ensure that your individual tasks are taking as long as you expected. If your estimates are off, this is your opportunity to make corrections and adjust your schedule accordingly.
Identifying the annoying tasks, even if they're necessary, is a way to gain understanding about the things that you don't enjoy doing. There are tasks that we like to do, and tasks that we avoid because they involve something unpleasant. For instance, I dislike writing monthly status reports. Consequently, I wait until the last minute to do them, and I can agonize over them for a couple of hours, even though they should only take a few minutes. They interrupt other work when I finally have to work on them. So, I flag the annoying tasks and schedule them for early in the morning, when I'm less likely to be interrupted and I'm at my mental peak. The results for you will be the same at your best time of day.
All of this may seem like too much effort, but it's not, especially when compared with the total time you spend working. This system took me about an hour to set up. Adding new tasks and reflecting on the time it took to complete old tasks takes about 15 minutes a week. The return can be much greater, especially if you're as poorly organized as me.
Organizing your daily work and taking a few simple steps to make it more efficient should go a long way toward trimming time off of your workday. It may be possible to shorten your average day by up to an hour while still accomplishing the same amount or even more work. If you're already spending too much time in the office, taking control of your work and planning out your time in advance is the best way to reduce that time.