Time management skills are important for you while you are at work or at school. You need to know how much time you are spending on each activity. You need to know how much time you can allot to each activity, as well.
If you are at work and you are spending time surfing the web or talking with co-workers, you are wasting company time. You need to look at your time management habits so that you can improve on them. You want to be productive at work and not just waste time.
This article will help you to learn time management skills that you can use at work. It will give you some ideas on how to manage your time better. You can also do more research to get even more tips.
Tips for Time Management
1. Know How You’re Spending Your Time
The first thing that you want to do is track how you are spending your time. There are time tracker apps that you could use, or you could just write it down in a notebook. You should track what you are doing every fifteen minutes.
Write down everything that you are doing, including browsing the web or working on a project. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how small it is. You can’t improve your time management skills if you leave out the times that you are not working.
2. Stick to Your Schedule
Use time slots for each activity – you don’t want to have just one big eight-hour block that says work on project. Each fifteen-to-thirty-minute activity needs a time slot. You can break your eight-hour project into smaller time blocks.
If you need to research your project, you can do that for thirty minutes and put that in a time block. Then you can write for fifteen minutes and add that time block. Do this for every part of your project so that you know exactly what you were doing.
3. Prioritize
If you are using a to-do list, it also needs to be broken down into more manageable pieces. Prioritizing the list will help you to know what needs to be done first. You want to do the most important things first and the least important things later.
You can use a chart to help you to decide what is the most important. The chart is called the Eisenhower Matrix and can help you. It breaks things down into things that need to be done immediately, scheduled for later, delegate, or delete.
4. Do the Most Difficult Task First
This works best for people who like to procrastinate and put off tasks because they get overwhelmed. They often get overwhelmed because they see the most difficult task and feel that they can’t get it done. If they start with that task, they can get it done before they can procrastinate.
There is a method that is called Eat the Frog that tells you to do just this. Eating the frog would be the most difficult task that you have, so get it done first. Then you will have time to get to the other things that aren’t as important.
5. Group Similar Tasks
This is also called batch-processing and it just means that you are going to group similar tasks together to get them done on time. This helps you to get more done at once and helps you to avoid procrastination. You can group them by the objective or by the function.
For example, you could group all your meetings together at the same time on different days. Then you could respond to your emails at a certain time each day. After that you could get your reports done and distribute them to where they need to go.
6. Set Reasonable Time Limits
If you have a task that should only take you three hours to do, don’t set your time limit to the whole day, set it to three hours. You don’t want to waste your time and give yourself too much time. You want to set a reasonable time limit so that you can get it done in a timely manner.
If you give yourself too much time, you allow yourself time to surf the web or talk to co-workers about your weekend plans. It doesn’t allow you to get your work done in a timely manner. If you give yourself the three hours, you will have time to take a break and then get to the rest of your project.
7. Learn to Say No
If you are given a choice about adding more to your project plate, learn to say no. You don’t need to do all the things for the project, so don’t volunteer to do them. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses and do things that fit your strengths.
If you have been assigned something that you are not particularly good at, see if you can delegate that to someone who can do it better than you. This way, the task gets done but you don’t have to do something that you are not good at. The important thing is that the task gets done, not who does it.
8. Avoid Multitasking
The research now says that multitasking is not as good as it might sound. You lose time moving between tasks and can make mistakes because you aren’t paying as much attention as you should. It actually cuts down your efficiency and can be somewhat dangerous.
It might only take a few seconds to switch between tasks, but added up, this could take hours from your productivity each week. You want to save time, and multitasking will cost you time instead. Concentrate on one task at a time and you will get done sooner.
9. Keep Organized
Sometimes a lack of productivity is due to a lack of organization. If you are not organized, you will often lose important things such as important reports. You need to be more organized so that you can be more productive.
You can learn to be more organized – the first thing that you need to do is to keep your desk clean. Keep your files and shared drives coordinated so that you know what is in which one. Don’t forget to use your calendar to keep track of things – use color coding to know which is for personal items and which are work related.
10. Use Time Management Tools
There are many time management tools that you could use to help you out. There are computer related tools and tools that are on paper. You can choose which is best for you.
Computer tools that you could use are Slack, Dropbox, Google Calendar, and Canva. Slack will help you keep in communication with your team members. The others will help you to keep track of other pieces of your project.
Conclusion
There are many ways that you can keep track of your time in today’s world. You need to be able to keep track of your time and what you are doing during the day. This will help you to be more productive at work.
You want to learn how to manage your time at work so that you can be more productive and do your job right. You don’t want to waste time at work by doing things like surfing the web or talking to co-workers when you should be working. There is time for that when you are on your breaks.