Tips For Effective Time Management At The Workplace
Time management is the process of organizing and controlling time to get the best out of it. Anybody that can master this art does himself a lot of good.
If you’re always late to work, missing deadlines, giving excuses, and always in a rush or anxious, then I can assure you that you have a time management issue. You might have tried different alternatives, and come up with better ways of meeting up but if you can’t just seem to catch up to your colleagues, then you need help in creating a good time management schedule.
Every employee should read these effective time management tips. Even if you do not miss deadlines does not mean you’re all good on the time management scoreboard. You might need to get some reorganizing done to get the best out of your time and we’ll tell you why.
Benefits of Good Time Management
- A Good Leader: Time management is a trait of a good leader. It’s a working ground for those who will go on to achieve greatness in the future. Time management requires discipline because it’s one thing to create patterns, and quite another to stick to them. Learning to be disciplined in this area will tell in other areas.
- You’ll Find Enough Time for Yourself: If it always seems like you don’t have time for yourself or your loved ones then you need to get your time management skill going. When you can create a schedule that works for you and keep to it, you’ll find that you can make out time for your personal needs including family.
- Extra Time for Growth: When your time is well managed, you can find space for personal growth. How your daily schedule is so messed up and exerting, you will not be able to think of adding value to yourself. Even if you desire this, you may not be able to work on it. Better time management can get this done for you.
- Personal Achievement: It increases your confidence, makes YOU feel good, and increases your self-esteem. You stop feeling like a failure or a deuce. When the negative feedback starts reducing until they stop entirely, you can be confident in your ability as a professional and as a person.
- Good Time Management Affects Other Areas of Your Life: When you can master this in the workplace, you’ll be able to fix the errors after work. No, do not fear becoming mechanical. What it does is strangle the excesses, providing you with quality time for other things.
- Quality Outputs: When you begin to organize your day well, you’ll get better outputs to dish out too since you can find more time for your work.
- Better Career Opportunities: These records of quality outputs, better reviews and accomplishments will help you climb higher the organizational chain of your workplace or to achieve heights you desire elsewhere.
- It’s a Score For Your Performance Review: Good time management cannot hurt you. When you’re always punctual and meeting deadlines, it keeps you in your company’s good books while never looking harassed for want of time, making you seem superhuman to your colleagues. Which is not a bad deal to have in your pocket if you ask me. No one can say bad things about your time management skill, except of course the ones that think it makes them look bad. But that’s their cup of tea. They can either gear up or keep looking bad.
We could go on and on but by now you understand what we’re talking about when we say better time management is for everyone. Now, here are some tips for achieving effective time management.
Tips For an Effective Time Management
- List Tasks You Need to be Done: First, make a list of what you need to do the next day. Every single one, not minding their level of importance, we’ll get to that later. As you do them, you can cross them off delicately or tick them. Believe me, that feeling will make you excited.
- Make a daily schedule: Begin to arrange your list into a schedule. You can do this by grouping them into the morning, afternoon, and evening or Pre-work, work hours, and after work hours. Add timestamps to them; that is how long a task is expected to take you to do. This helps you keep focused.
- Don’t take more than you can chew: While preparing or arranging your day, there’s always the possibility of adding lots of work that may not be feasible in reality. You know your energy limit and what needs to be done first. Fix your schedule taking those things to mind.
- Delegate Duties: You don’t have to do everything yourself. Good time management skill is knowing what you can do and how to make use of the resources around you effectively including the human resources. If there’s something another can help you out with, ask them to do so while you supervise.
- Get a focus: Your schedule should be planned taking priority into account. Don’t overcrowd it. You can use colour codes to note the level of importance. “When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority”, says Karen Martin, author of The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence.
- Identify Time Wasters: Find them out early. Prepare for them before they come to you. Check what easily distracts you from the work on your desk. These distractions could include personal emails, social media, talking to a colleague or answering personal calls, helping out a colleague, etc.
Once you’ve discovered these distractions then you must install gates to keep them out. Like putting your phone on do not disturb mode, freezing social media apps until later, and putting up do not disturb markers on your door or around your desk.
- Do things in Groups: Group your tasks in ways that will help you save time like going to a particular location or doing things that look alike e.g instead of allowing your phone to ding every minute reminding you of a new message, you can create two to three hours to check out all your social handles at the same time or simultaneously.
Spending excessive time on the internet is a major time-waster itself. So if the mention of only two hours on your handles during weekdays caused you to be wowed, you must investigate if you don’t have it as an issue.
- Do harder tasks first: It’s usually more interesting to do easier tasks first than the harder ones. You might say it gives you the energy to keep going knowing one more thing is ticked off your list but most of the time, it doesn’t work this way. Doing easier tasks first may make you lose interest in the harder ones. Once you remember the magnitude of brainwork involved, you just might get discouraged and be tempted to postpone it or them. So, tackle those hard tasks first, preferably in the morning while you’re still fresh and ready for the day, and as your energy wears out, you can still take on the easier ones seeing as they don’t demand much from you.
- Review Yourself: A time management schedule is a personal endeavour. No one may be aware of it or have the ability to force you to follow them unless you have an accountability partner. You are your judge, jury, and executioner.
Fix regular reviews, preferably weekly. Grade yourself sincerely too. It will help you see your weaknesses and strengths allowing you the opportunity to fortify your gates.
- Reward/ Discipline Yourself: After the review, we recommend creating rewards and discipline methods for extra motivation. Nothing too extravagant of course. You could reward yourself with extra time on the phone or discipline by reducing your time on social media. You get to choose whichever you want so, you should think about what works for you and can be the extra motivator.
- Fix Work Breaks: This is important though it may not look like it. You are not superhuman and you need time to unwind. Create this time to be free and simply relax your oars. Be careful not to take too much or too little. Also, be careful not to fix your break time with activities that can become distractions after the break period is over or can spill over.
- Be disciplined: Here comes the hard part. It’s keeping to your schedule. It’s quite easy to create one than it is to stick to them. You have to want to get better. You have to want to get those benefits of a good time management system. You have to really want to feel good about yourself if you’re going to come out a conqueror against time distractions.
It’s important to note that you might slip up your discipline, and allow a few stab wounds on your armour in the early days of your time management schedule. Do not allow this to discourage you at all. Masters are not born, they are made. Just keep at it. Note that this is not an excuse to slip up but to forgive yourself.
What a time management schedule means is that you’re schooling your mind and body to be disciplined. If you keep finding excuses to go against your schedule, in no time you will discard it altogether. Learning time management won’t come easy. Nothing ever starts that way, but if you can wait up, you’ll find yourself reaping these fruits in no time.