Any tips on improving concentration at work?
I need to stop making billing mistakes. I make about 10-11 a month and it is too much. Environment isn’t the most quiet but I have no other choices than to seal with it. What is your tips to improve concentration so that I don’t make that many mistakes

You’ll probably not improve your concentration, but you can certainly improve your process for producing bills. Checklists are great for removing the error potential in a given process.

You should pay either the company or a charity of your choice 10 Euros for every mistake you make.

Problem with checklist is the time they will take me. Basically the boss says it will take him barely an hour to do the usual 37-40 invoices we do everyday. So I keep on pressuring me to be faster.
But I think I will have to start doing them.

Try getting some Ritalin.

I have no other choices than to seal with it.

You really do have a problem with concentration 😉

MSP that is typically the kind of mistakes I make.

If it is a generally ‘repeatable’ task – one that you have to follow a broadly similar process in order to complete…it would be worth spending some time looking at what your mistakes are (are there parts of the task that you always make mistakes with?)

Then, whilst acknowledging that a full on checklist would be time consuming – you could put a few little checks in place on only those areas you are making the mistakes. It won’t take long to reduce the errors, but you need to know what they are before you can attempt to put it right!

As far as the noisy environment goes, how long have you been doing it? When I first moved to an open plan office I struggled, but now find that when I’m on my own it’s too quiet! Again – it shouldn’t take too long to get used to this.

…I’d also be reminding myself that I’m getting paid to do it right, and if I don’t do it right, I might be in a position where I don’t get paid.

Have a word with yourself, stop doing a shit job, take some responsibility, be a grown up, etc.

Oooh, look! A squirrel!

Sorry, what was the question again?

Checklist is good for sure. Get it right first, then get it fast.

Another good thing to do is…errm…

Oooh, look! A squirrel!

Sorry, what was the question again?

You are too clever. At least that’s always my excuse for making mistakes in tedious time consuming repetitive tasks. I need more (ahem) stimulation or my mind wanders looking for something interesting to think about.

My suggestions:

1. Try breaking it down. Do 10, go away and do something else, then do another 10 etc. This means more planning as obviously you will need to start earlier.

2. Get somebody else to do it. Do you have an admin assistant ? Get one.

3. Find somebody helpful to check your work. Often other people spot mistakes more easily than you.

Hope that helps !

Basically the boss says it will take him barely an hour to do the usual 37-40 invoices we do everyday.

Dont let that push you to go too fast without being confident in the job, as above said, get better then quicker. If it was easy to be as quick as your boss (who probably has loads of experience of doing the task) then you wouldn’t be doing it, you’d have long moved on to bigger and better things, just like they did.

Basically it’s the billing that is problematic, sometimes I cock up the quantities or the ref of the article or the shipping.
I will start to edit the delivery slip and checking it before the bill itself.
But sometimes even re-reading it a couple of times I just miss the same mistake.
For example billing some alloy nipples rather than red ones.

Not easy especially if tired. I’ve tried checklists, printing things out and then ticking things off and asking other people. Making ad hoc notes as I go along also helps.

The human brain isn’t really designed for this. It’s more geared to throwing rocks at tigers and making sense of palaeolithic society. I hope you find a solution!

You should pay either the company or a charity of your choice 10 Euros for every mistake you make.

This. We’re loss averse, we respond much better to incentives when we stand to lose something, than when we stand to gain…

I put headphones with relaxing music on when I need to focus at work. If I need to be really accurate I do the work once, put it aside and double check it later on…

Get more sleep?

Improving concentration

In the days when I was doing daily meditation I found a noticeable reduction in my absentmindedness,
ie, not forgetting stuff. No idea why, perhaps clearing your mind leaves it less cluttered ?

You do about 40 invoices a day and make 10-11 mistakes a month? That’s a pretty low error rate, c2%. If he can do your daily invoicing in an hour then he hasn’t trained you well or he hasn’t managed your productivity.

I reckon your boss may be talking a load of rubbish.

He can do invoices in 90 seconds, repeatedly for one hour without making mistakes – aye right.

Ear plugs??? Not sure how noisy it is where you work but I find it mighty distracting when it’s noisy! Just explain to co-workers…… They’ll understand! Mine do thank goodness…

Basically it’s the billing that is problematic, sometimes I cock up the quantities or the ref of the article or the shipping.
I will start to edit the delivery slip and checking it before the bill itself.
But sometimes even re-reading it a couple of times I just miss the same mistake.
For example billing some alloy nipples rather than red ones.

Sorry if I should know this. So you are a bike shop mechanic who struggles with the invoices? Well whatever you do you do the main bit of the job well but the invoicing badly?

I’ll throw out a few thoughts.

Are you dyslexic? Some of the things you’ve said are consistent with dyslexia.

I have a similar problem. Luckily for me its only an annual job. The final totalling of marks for course work to send the exam board.

In the end we have concluded some one else has to do it. So a lab technician enters all the marks to the board for me.

Some not very helpful comments here

Have a word with yourself, stop doing a shit job, take some responsibility, be a grown up, etc

See I don’ think its a lack of care on your part. Accuracy is something people find very hard. My proof reading is totally dire as I just see what I hope I wrote. I can’t fit all the reasons why that is now here but its real not just a lack of care

Is this information going onto a PC?

If so get software to read it back to you. Its slow but can make a huge difference. That’s a tip from a dyslexic fireman

Can you make what you are doing more real to you in some way. Maybe a pile of high lighters of different colours so that each type of information is high lighted in a different colour

Or try and visualise each piece of information. See in your 32 red nipples and actually see the pile in your head. I realised I remembered values well but numbers badly. So for example I can’t remember a pin number like 3 5 2 8. But the value 3,528 is way more memorable. Its just over half way between 3,000 and 4,000 to start with. Or I remember the shape it makes on the keypad

But if its at all possible try negotiating some one to check these jobs or do them for you

🙄

If you worked in a bike shop and 10 customers a month came back and said you’ve done this wrong, how long would you work in said bike shop?

Get a grip, stop making mistakes.

It strikes me that your job is probably fully computerised in larger shops and errors reduced to less than 0.1% say, caused by people putting the wrong things in parts bins, so yeah, that’s your competition – a machine! Also an error on a bag of spoke nipples is one thing but an error on a frame might be more serious.
From an employers perspective, the cost of the error is not just the difference in the cost of the parts; the cost of sorting it out will dwarf that error, especially in small items.
However, it may be that you are annoying your boss in other, less quantifiable ways but this is all he can actually pin on you. Doing much unpaid overtime? Are those around you? That’s the classic one: just not working hard enough.

As for the invoicing: what, to whom, how much, unique ID, group them into sets of similar items if you can, or do in batches of 5 or 10. Swap batches with a colleague for mutual checking.

Your boss probably can do them a lot faster and better. That’s why he’s the boss. And it’s his money you are spunking.

Basically a big art of my job is he billing (and no I don’t work in an LBS). It wasn’t in the job description, but it looks like boss’ wife took my arrival as an opportunity to get half time.
I am the only one doing it. And bills can go from one line to 30 with different kind of products. I know what you mean trailer trash as for each error we have to do the billing again. So I will try to do it in two steps.

Process, Procedure, and error catching.
Sounds like you need a system….
How big is the company, are you doing manual data collection then re-entering it into another system?
There are many systems for doing this sort of thing, some may be applicable to your work place.
In the end of the day put the right systems in place and you can eliminate errors and speed up the work – however you have to put the work in up front to get these gains

well we are doing around 2.5M €.
It’s either an hand written or a printed order with products I have to manualy bill.

I think that providing a better description of the current process might help folk come up with answers, but it’s basically a process error. Thinking about it from start to finish rather than concentrating on your specific role will help. The idea is to remove the causes of errors at the point they are introduced to the process. That might be down to better (IT) systems or could be as simple as using multi-part forms, better part numbers etc.

This is a system that destined to fail, anyone not making mistakes is probably covering them better.

A former boss used to claim that raising an invoice was less than five minutes work. The staff who did it (and worked for me) were rather put out by this – I asked him to show them how to do it quicker several times which he never had time to – then one christmas everyone was on holiday and a customer needed and invoice before the year end.

I came back to a world of abuse about how it took almost a whole morning for him to produce an invoice for this client and why were my staff all off at the same time. He never moaned about the fact it typically takes them 15-20 mins to do again.

In terms of accuracy I find that if they are just crunching numbers its impossible to be accurate. If you know what was shipped and what its likely value is etc then you can usually spot the howlers. Automated systems which track orders all the way through make life much better as the input error is usually at the start (order receipt) and someone spots it on the way through, the invoicing is then just a few minutes at the end to basically run a report. Its usually much easier to fix errors at the order end than once in the accounts too. With £2m turnover I would expect automated systems.

Sounds like someone needs a spreadsheet. To Excel!

What was the question again?

could you use some sort of colour code to ease the reference points and improve clarity?

may take a few goes to get used to it maybe, but then you may get faster and more accurate.

Visit this website every few minutes. Definitely helps me. I told my boss so it must be true.

Dez not funny

Arrr caught in a web loop

I get that all the time Juan. 🙁

Change the time of day that you do them as well. I like to detailed stuff as early in the morning as possible, if possible before others get in so there are no distractions. By the afternoon I’m usually ready for a distraction or two