Automation is the key to successful work load management. Rather than manually doing every task yourself you should be investing time and energy using all available tools so that things tick over under their own steam.
Before you start the automation process however it is worth making sure that you have stopped doing unneccessary stuff and are focused on tasks that are providing tangible benefits. Automating tasks that shouldn’t be done just results in a bloated mass of work that serves no one and may result in you spending all of your time managing this behemoth. Just don’t do it.
With that now in mind if you take this blog for instance – the content is written and published on www.head4space.com the output of the RSS feed is then sent to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn usinf ifttt. This activity would have taken me around 30 minutes per post and probably result in some targets getting over-looked. Instead I spent 30 minutes setting up the ifttt recipes so that it all flows automatically without me having to lift a finger.
If you spend loads of you day filing email then setting up rules either in GMail, Outlook or Mac Mail is pretty straight forward. These rules can help to keep you organised and prioritise based upon criteria you determine.
Take time to look at the tasks that you do in a given week (now you’ve honed and focused) and see if there are common patterns that could be made easier / quicker by having using features of software for automation, creating scripts or using the OSX Automator. These can often be scheduled like an Anti-Virus check so that things are kept up to date without breaking a sweat.
If you find that you lack the skills to automate the tasks yourself then you can consider using a contractor to create the solution for you. A good place to start looking for skilled resource to help you do this is www.elance.com as you can outsource very small specific pieces of work at often affordable rates.
Once you’ve mastered automation you should have more time to spend on tasks that require your dedicated attention.
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