Do you think you can get more done in a day? Struggling to manage multiple projects simultaneously? Are meeting deadlines your biggest downfall? You may need to seriously consider how effectively you are managing your time.
The individuals who are aware and have gained control over the art of time management, have a higher probability to enhance their productivity. Family, social life, business, extra-curricular, fitness, etc. – they manage to create time for everything, while also doing well in all these domains.
What Is Time Management?
Time management is a process of consciously dividing your time to do multiple tasks in an efficient manner. The prime motive of time management is to improve productivity and have a consistent track record in all your endeavors.
Why Should You Use Time Management?
You should utilize time management if you want to achieve a desirable work-life balance and also reduce stress from work-related projects. Professionals who are constantly in the grind eventually face burnout and begin to showcase below-par work quality.
As a professional, each positive attribute of time management will lead to the betterment of other aspects of your life. Is your life drifting towards the extreme end of the career-spectrum? Yes? Then you are the ideal candidate to apply time management to neutralize the effect of this drift.
How Does Time Management Maximize Your Productivity?
Time management is directly proportional to an individual’s productivity. Allocating time brackets to specific tasks, chunking your time for different activities, and following a day-to-day schedule are assured routes to increasing productivity. Here are a few more factors that influence productivity:
- Clarity towards goals
- Prioritizing helps to work in a streamlined fashion
- Planned days reduce stress and help in sharper focus
- The positivity that arises when you check-off tasks from a to-do list
- Strategic breakdown of assignments
Eventually, these factors help in completing work before or on time. Thus one can enjoy greater durations of recreational and leisure activities.
Tips To Managing Your Time More Efficiently
Time management can be a hassle for the less-organized people. Let’s educate ourselves with some effective tips and solutions to utilize time in the best possible way.
1. Wake up early
Waking up early means you will have longer days and thus more time to finish tasks. Even if you have not planned your day in advance, early mornings are a good time to spend 15 to 30 minutes to make a solid plan for the day. Probably even for the next day.
2. Refrain from half-work
Half-work is considered as leaving your planned projects or tasks half-way and telling yourself you will get back to it. For example – you may work on Monday to complete an investor’s presentation before the deadline for Wednesday. But for some reason, you procrastinate and prolong, only to find out it’s already Tuesday and you are not done.
We live in an era of information overload. It is not hard to get diverted and distracted at regular intervals. The best way to tackle the detrimental half-work jinx is to establish a razor-sharp focus on what you are doing. Eliminate all background noise and solely put in all your energies on the responsibility at hand.
3. Use a calendar
How hard is it to maintain an online calendar? Not at all. You can set notifications to pop-up at time periods before your meeting or deadline. Even better, you can access this calendar from all your devices, allow others to schedule appointments, set reminders well in advance, and even share it with fellow employees.
Consider using a working days calculator to get a better sense of how to utilize your team and other resources at hand.
4. Collate alike activities
Collation of similar activities helps to reduce spending time on a category of tasks you have already worked on in the same day. Here a few examples:
- Complete all your emails within a specified time window
- Finish all your calls at one go
- Look for opportunities only during an allocated time
- Don’t do marketing amidst your other activities
The whole point of combining similar tasks is to create a sense of synergy. This allows you to tackle more touchpoints in a day and increase the number of things you actually get done.
5. Delegate work
You cannot always do everything by yourself. There is no better way of getting things done efficiently other than delegating work. Provided you have a team or a friend to trust and the task is not of utmost importance, delegation can save plenty of valuable time.
Besides, people only delegate work that does not demand their complete attention. This saved up time can be spent on work that actually demands the full attention of the individual who is delegating secondary tasks.
6. Stop waiting
In the unfortunate event that things did not go as planned, abstain from waiting. Waiting will only prolong your day and get you off-track. Rather invest the time spent waiting in completing other work or equipping your mental arsenal with relevant knowledge.
For example – Your meeting with another CEO is pushed forward by 30 minutes. Would you stare at the wall? Would you tap your legs in impatience for those 30 minutes? No. You must consider revising your meeting plan, or read a book, or plan your next task better, or even jot down ideas.
7. Multitasking is inefficient
Any project you have completed that requires you to come back and make changes is a job not well-done. Over 80% of the time this happens because you were multitasking while working on the actual project. Stop using your brains on 2 or 3 different projects simultaneously. Rather use your entire brain on the task at hand. This increases the probability of task completion.
8. Track your time
Last but not the least, always track your time spent on separate tasks each day/week/month. Don’t you want to find out if you are being as efficient as you can?
The perks of time management far outweigh the benefits of multitasking and attempting to juggle several things at once. Remember, if accounted for, every single moment of the day is one that never comes back.
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