The 6 Tips to Make Time Go Faster at Work

Time doesn't go faster or slower. It has a uniform flow. It's how you utilize time and the things you do that affect your perception of the needle moving faster or slower.

Those who work remotely may not relate to it, but people actually experience slow days at work. Monday blues are real. And the time on a hump day seems to move a lot slower compared to the rest of the week.

With that said, you can make time go faster at work without having to compromise on your efficiency. 

Want to know how?

Here are the 6 tips to make time go faster at work.

1. Plan Your Day

Planning your day can make time go faster at work. Starting a day with clear goals not only improves productivity but also enables you to experience a fast-paced day at work.

Break your goals into small objectives and associate each achievement with rewards. This makes work more of a fun experience than a daily grind.

Planning ensures success whether you represent a remote work culture or an on-site work setting. It helps you manage your time better and improve your productivity. Planning your day helps you achieve more than usual which fuels the sense of accomplishment.

This helps fortify your mind and enables you to keep up with the workload or repetitive tasks at work without having to experience lethargy. 

Planning can make time fly at work and facilitates optimal performance throughout the day.

2. Avoid Disengagement

Disengagement can cause you to have a slow day at work. When you're doing something or committed to a particular task at hand, your brain is occupied. Hours pass without you realizing it.

Being disengaged or sitting idle feels as if someone has slowed the clock down. In this state, you're easily distracted, annoyed, and more susceptible to boredom. This lowers your productivity and hinders your growth significantly.

Now, it's not possible to get your head down throughout the day. However, maintaining a certain level of commitment and focus is a prerequisite for being productive at work.

3. Create a To-Do List

A carefully designed to-do list is your roadmap for the day. It helps you manage the tasks better and maintain productivity. Knowing what your day looks like helps you get started with much-needed motivation.

Creating a smart to-do list is important. You wouldn't want to spend more time trying to organize the tasks than actually doing them.

A to-do list helps you take your eyes off the clock and on to the work. You wouldn't be obsessing over time anymore but rather focus on doing things that are important.

A well-balanced to-do list gets you through the day without you having to experience exhaustion. It leaves you with more time to spare that you can use to rejuvenate and get back to work with a revived focus.

4. Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is one of the efficient tactics to make time go faster at work. With this technique, you work in short intervals. Each session lasts 30 minutes. The first 25 minutes require you to concentrate on the tasks at hand followed by a quick 5-minute break.

This is an extremely useful work tactic for people who find it difficult to concentrate on work for longer hours. With this technique, you work in small bursts of time and take a breather after every productive session.

With this technique, you totally commit to the task at hand. You don't have the luxury of getting distracted as the active window is quite small.

Pomodoro Technique keeps your attention off the clock and helps you stay focused at work. The small breaks after each active interval allow you to freshen up and minimize the likelihood of burnout.

5. Eat the Frog

Eating the frog means taking up the most difficult task on your to-do list and doing it first. Doing this makes it a lot easier to keep up with whatever the rest of the day throws at you. A difficult task takes a significant amount of time. By the time you're done with it, hours had passed already.

When you start your day, your energy levels are high. So, it is a wise strategy to start with a challenging task first. Checking difficult tasks off your to-do list gives you a much-needed boost that helps you make it through the day with ease.

Doing easy tasks first creates an illusion of productivity. Things may seem fine at first but as the day passes you'd realize that you've parked difficult tasks for later. This would make you more attentive to the clock.

This not only affects your focus but also your overall performance. You'd end up overthinking and doing less which is not a good sign. So, if you want to make time go faster at work, just eat that frog first.

6. Stop Staring at the Clock

Staying fixated on the clock isn't going to make it go faster. Checking time consistently at work will only make your day seem longer than usual. 

This phenomenon is called Chronostasis. According to this concept, staying fixated on an object makes you perceive that things have slowed down. In this state, an event lasts for an extended time than generally observed.

However, this is an illusion. The phenomenon has more psychological implications than real.

Now, imagine the feeling of the clock slowing down on a boring day at work. It's nothing less than excruciating. The more you stare at the clock the longer you'd perceive the day to be. So, try and stay focused on the tasks at hand than counting each second on the clock.

It's a Wrap

There you have it. The 6 tips to make time go faster at work. The recommendations not only make time go by quicker but also boost your productivity at work. So, try these out and see which ones work best for you.