Getting Tasks Done Efficiently

I described my working day to a contact recently as “like having one foot each on two escalators travelling at different speeds”. Not an elegant image, but an accurate one.

Often I’m drafting an email to the head of commercial at the Telegraph about what I’ve got planned for January’s magazines while simultaneously asking a PR for a chef who can comment on x-subject for tomorrow’s paper. 

It’s not always conducive to getting tasks done efficiently but while juggling daily features and a weekly magazine, it’s just a reality. I’ve taken to writing immediate notes on the left-hand pages of my trusty notebook and longer-term tasks on the right.

I’ve decided that despite loving a pun and/or a witty, teasing subject line in an email, what really helps me is a clear outline, so that I can dispatch said emails to folders where I can retrieve them when I really need them. 

At the moment I’ve got a ‘Christmas’ folder, a ‘new restaurants’ folder, a ‘Books 2023’ folder and various others. Knowing without opening an email roughly where to drop it and when I need to read it speeds life up, so the clearer you can be with your subject lines, the better. I use odd moments at the weekend or while eating lunch at my desk (yes, I am that sad) ploughing through those folders with my brain fully engaged in that area rather than the endlessly distracting and distracted ‘two escalator’ mode.

It’s my second-favourite new efficiency, just after dictating text messages. But that’s another story…