4 office tips to make you more productive

It's amazing how quickly your work day can fill up with unimportant tasks. The result? By quitting time you haven't accomplished even half of what you had planned to do. Want to be more productive at the office? Here are four proven tips to help you achieve more in a day than you believed was possible.

It's staggering how quickly your day bogs down with trivial tasks, the kind that prevent you from achieving all of your daily workplace goals. However, you needn't overhaul your schedule to increase your office productivity. These four simple time-savers will quite possibly help you become the most efficient person you know.

Turn off your email alerts and don't check your email constantly.

• Although checking your email takes less than a minute, it completely distracts you from the task at hand and can significantly slow down your productivity levels.
• Since you probably need to stay on track with your email, set a certain time to check it.

The best time to check email is right before your break.

• The task won't interrupt your work and you can focus on the messages without any distractions.

The best way to accomplish your goals is to make a list every day of what you need to do.

• Some people like to make their list the day before, while others may find it best to write a new list every morning.

Writing a list takes less than a minute, but it can do wonders for keeping your day on track and ensuring you don't miss anything important.

Instead of an email or text message, try talking to someone in person about business matters. In most cases this only adds a minute to your day, and it can sometimes be a time-saver.

• There's a huge benefit of talking to someone in person. You'll get more direct answers to your questions as well as better feedback than you would from an email.

If you go beyond surface electronic interactions, you'll start seeing tangible benefits for your productivity.

It's amazing how a minute of rearranging your desk or office can change your productivity levels.

• Organizing your office helps you to work more efficiently. After you've finished up a project, take a minute to organize the files and put them away in a designated space – even if they're digital files.

There's a tendency to work on files then save them anywhere on your computer. If ever you need them again, they'll be easier to find if you name them properly and save them in an organized fashion.

• Remember to purge old files that may be cluttering your office or computer, or at the very least archive the content.

These four easy-to-do tips, although they may appear as though they won't do much, will actually help keep you and your productivity on track.