By Tom Jager

When you find yourself unable to find balance between life and work and keep procrastinating tasks, it is time to make some changes. As soon as you learn to reorganize your activities and methods, you can finish everything that falls within your responsibility within a timely manner. Believe it or not, the tasks that took up most of your day can be done with some extra time left for yourself. All you got to do is implement these quick-wins and boost the office skills.

1.    Work on Your Communication Skills

Communication is the key to good business. Whether you are speaking with a client, your boss, or the staff, your main focus should be on effective communication.

Preparing for an interview is simply not enough. When you are already in the office, you must continuously work on your communication skills. Bad communication can lead to many problems and misunderstandings, and eventually make you lose the good reputation you hold at the moment.

Keep the Communication Simple

If your task is to give information and instruction to others, ensure that you give it in a way that cannot cause misunderstandings. Clarity should be your first objective, so you may want to keep the language simple. After all, even if you are the best speaker in the world, others may not possess your communication skills. As long as you keep the language simple, your message will be understood by everyone.

Learn to Make Presentations

One of the trends of today’s technology world is passing on ideas through presentations. So, find a good tutorial for presentation-making, and work on your speech.

Work on Your Writing

Why should you work on the writing skills?

Because, first of all, writing is a way of improving your communication skills in general. Secondly, in an office, you will be asked to write reports and e-mails, as well as create pitches you will later give to the boss.

Of course, no one is talented in writing or speaking in front of others, but this is something you can definitely work on. In the meantime, get some courses or hire a professional essay writing service to do the hard job for you.

2.    Be Prepared to Do a Lot of Planning

Organization can do wonders for your free time and tasks. In an office where you get assigned tasks on daily basis, planning is essential, regardless of the size or repetitiveness of the projects.

Here are some tips that will get you on the right path:

• Get several planners on your desk and start organizing
• Whenever you are assigned a new project, make a to-do list and plan its completion
• Keep the yearly planners for repeat projects for further reference – these will prove to be very helpful next year!
• When assigned a large project, start planning before you start acting
• Break down big projects into small steps, with a preferred completion date included
• Delegate the steps that need to be done by others

When you get the hang of it, you will find that planning allows you to finish things in time and is the key to good work at the office.

3.    Prioritize

At the office, many people will try to delegate tasks to you to make things easier for themselves. Your bosses may notice your potential and keep pushing you. When the time comes for you to handle more projects at once, you need this skill more than anything else.

Otherwise, you will be stuck jumping around from one task to another one. Rushing to finish the tasks within a deadline can be frustrating and very unfulfilling. Fortunately, the skill of prioritizing will provide you with the strategy you need to handle the pressure.

Wake up half an hour before every morning and start prioritizing. This skill is similar to that of organization, so you should be able to learn both simultaneously. While making your to-do list, prioritize the content. Eliminate those who don’t have to be done that day, and give yourself time to do the tasks that have the highest priority. Add the rest to your planner.

4.    Learn to Delegate

You are probably not alone in your office, which means that sometimes – you have to learn to delegate. When the deadlines are impossible for you to meet, delegate some of the tasks to other employees.

It is not embarrassing or uncommon to need help. In fact, asking for help when you need it can often be essential for the completion of a project. You can literally get in trouble if you do not learn to delegate.

That’s it! It is a lot of work and skills like these are not easy to master, but you don’t need to rush into it. Every day, you can learn something new, and build on this skills while at the office. When it comes to office skills, practice makes perfect!

Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at Awriter.  He has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+  or  Facebook.