Optimise your time

We all have the same amount of time at our disposal: about 8 hours per average working day. How can you optimise every second of your time without running around like a headless chicken? 

Case in point: You're working on something really important that needs finishing urgently, but your boss, clients and workmates keep interrupting you and you can't just tell them to go away.

Solution: the two-minute rule. Lift your nose out of the file you're working on for 2 minutes and no more, for an emergency (to send a quick email or call someone back). Otherwise, note it down and go back to it when you have a spare minute. "You need to show you're in charge of your time and make sure you don't let something important pass you by," says our expert.

NB: The two-minute rule applies to everything, even things that seem more interesting than the task in hand! When you've got the mother of all reports to hand in tomorrow morning, it's easy to find a hundred distractions... 

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