5 TIPS FOR BETTER TIME MANAGEMENT AT WORK
Ever heard the quote about having 24 hours in each day so you must make it count? Well, what about when you only have 8 hours in the working day?
The average worker spends 51% of the workday on low to no value tasks (Zippia).
Just because you’re working, doesn’t mean you’re working well and making the most of your time. Here are some tips to better your time management:
BE SELF-AWARE OF HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME
If you get to the end of your 8-hour working day and think “what did I even do all day?”, it’s probably time to develop better self-awareness.
We all procrastinate, scroll on social media, or do anything but that really important task due Friday. This is why it’s important to hold yourself accountable.
It’s all fun and games to learn practical tips on time-management, or anything for that matter, but how many times do you walk away from reading a blogpost or a book and actually live it out?
That’s because most people aren’t self-aware.
Mental health and psychology website Verywell Mind describes self-awareness as “your ability to perceive and understand the things that make you who you are as an individual, including your personality, actions, values, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts. Essentially, it is a psychological state in which the self becomes the focus of attention.”
When it comes to time management, self-awareness is at the core of how we set goals, communicate, see motivation.
Verywell Mind has a fantastic blog post about self-awareness if you want to find out more
HAVE MEANINGFUL GOALS
Poor time management can be the result of low motivation and low motivation can be the result of not having anything meaningful to work towards.
Going into the office every day with no vision of where you want to be and how your day-to-day productivity will help you get there, will leave you feeling uninspired.
Think about where you are now and where you’d like to go and take that into your daily routine. Whether it’s:
Getting a promotion
Developing your skillset
Completing an exciting project
Growing into a role you’re really passionate about
These things will bring more meaning into your daily routine, causing you to be more intentional about how you spend your time
DO THE HARDEST TASKS IN THE MORNING
Here’s the practical stuff. No one wants to leave that intense task till after lunch when you’re feeling sluggish. Do the hard tasks when your brain is fresh, so you get it out the way and leave your afternoon for the easier or exciting tasks.
However, your prime time may be different. Maybe between the hours of 3-5 are the most productive and you know to tackle difficult things then.
But whatever you do, ensure you’re prioritising workload in a way where you minimise stress and don’t leave the long, strenuous tasks till the last minute.
NO DISTRACTIONS
Yes, this relates to those times you scroll through LinkedIn for 15 minutes, or you chat in the kitchen for too long, but it also relates to the times when you’re actually “working”.
When planning out your day, don’t just identify which tasks take the longest and therefore they’re the ones to do now – identify whether they contribute enough to your success
If someone’s asked you to get it done, of course get it done, but if you’ve identified a task that could be beneficial, take time to actually think about how beneficial it would be and whether there are better things to spend your time on.
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN
Going through the day without having an idea of what you’re going to do next or what you need to complete can lead to time being wasted on the wrong things.
Spending 10-12 minutes planning your day can save you 2 hours of time (Zippia). And that plan should be realistic. Psychologists say we overestimate our capacity to get things done, calling it the “planning fallacy” (Science Direct).
It’s easy to plan your day like crazy without really thinking about how long each thing should take. When you realise you’ve bit off more than you can chew, you can begin to feel demotivated, which can waste even more time
Use management tools to help structure your workload better and remember deadlines. Tools like Trello and Asana are great for this.
- Written by Oliver Howson
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