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Sometimes all that it takes for you to get the promotion that you have been looking for at work is a little bit of extra efficiency.

When you adopt a few easy time management practices into your daily job, you and your boss will notice improvement in the results you deliver each day. Instead of patiently waiting for your boss to pick you for that next promotion, try these suggested tactics to get noticed and get promoted.

1. Clear the clutter. If your desk is cluttered, and your papers are all a mess, your boss is going to notice. They may not say anything, and maybe won’t even consciously notice, but come promotion time, it will be in their mind. Consider this, if you have two candidates, equally qualified for the promotion, but one had a clean and neat desk, while the other’s desk was a mass of clutter, who would you promote? “Mr. Neat and Tidy” or “Clutter Boy”?

So bite the bullet and clean up your cluttered office. Two things will happen when you do. The first thing is that you’ll be more productive when you don’t have to go digging through the mess on your desk just to find that important paper. The next thing you’ll notice is that when your manager stops by your newly clean and tidy office, he’s going to see that you’re taking your work seriously. He may even comment on it and this will be a wonderful opportunity for you to express your interest in taking on more responsibility. It might seem hard, but just bite the bullet and clean up your office.

2. Create an environment that supports your productivity. Rather than rely solely on your own will power to be productive and efficient, structure your environment to give you a “leg-up” in achieving your time management goals. Here’s a simple exercise for you to do. Pick 5 objects currently in your office. One by one, look at each and ask your the simple question of whether that object supports your productivity or detracts from it. Just be honest with yourself when you answer. It’s your life and your time. You need to take it seriously and be honest.

When you tell yourself the truth, you’ll see what you should do with each object. You want to eliminate any object in your environment that does not clearly support your time management and efficiency goals. You should listen to your own answers and follow through. You only want objects in your office which support your goals, nothing else. So right now bite the bullet and get rid of any “non-supportive” objects in your environment and you’ll immediately feel the difference.

Having more energy and better productivity are two key elements your boss will look for as promotion time draws near.

3. Efficiently and effectively take care of your email, phone calls and verbal communications. We all live in a wired “must be done now” type of world. People who can effectively handle the fast pace of all types of communications are more likely to be at the front of the list when it comes to be promotion time.

When it comes to emails, it’s easier to say “don’t let your inbox fill up” than it is to actually find the time to process all your messages. That’s life so get over it. Take a few minutes and figure out a system that will separate emails from your boss, your coworkers and your friends into separate categories. Answer the emails from your boss first with brief and intelligent replies that show you are on top of things, and that you are following through on your commitments.

After you handle the emails from your boss, go ahead and answer the emails to your peers or other employees at your level. Use the same efficient and effective language you use with your boss and don’t worry if these people wonder why you always answer the boss first. That’s the way it supposed to be done and when it is time for your boss to give a promotion, he will see you as the person who communicates well and good communication is critical in the work place.

The last thing to mention about email is that you need to have a personal, non-work email your friends can use when they want to send you an email. Most people don’t realize that emails sent to their work address essentially becomes property of the company. If you have a private non-work email address you only check from home, you won’t have to worry about the possibility of a friend sending “career damaging” information to you at work.

These simple steps may seem “too easy”, but don’t let that stop you. When you start doing them, you and everyone else, including the boss, will see an improvement in your work and how you get things done. It will be clear and obvious that you are ready for more responsibility and a promotion. Get to work right now and you’ll be surprised at how fast things change for you.