10 Time Management Tips to Keep You On Track
Posted in Productivity
- Conquer the clutter. If your desk harbours mounds of papers, books, files and personal accessories, you may be adding unnecessary stress to your day. An organized desk will help you relax and become more productive. Schedule 10 to 15 minutes each week to clear your work area of junk mail, old papers, and other accumulated clutter. Eliminate behaviours that lead to clutter.
Defuse distractions. Distractions can add up to a major drain on productivity. Check out these three posts for tips on eliminating external distractions:- Play to your strengths. You should not try to work against your inner nature. What time of day you are at your best? Schedule the toughest work for your period of peak productivity.
- Eliminate redundancy. Analyze every process you use to determine what steps can be eliminated. Common problems include multiple signatures for approval, extra steps designed to circumvent systems or correct problems that could be addressed more directly, and generating multiple copies that are no longer required.
- Group and separate. Tedious tasks can be grouped for increased efficiency: file all at once, prepare invoices all at once, answer e-mail all at once. Large tasks or projects are best tackled in small pieces. Using this approach, even the most daunting tasks become manageable.
- Share the load. As the old saying goes, “many hands make light work.” Performance of dreaded tasks—like an annual inventory—can be a lot more fun when many are involved and frequent breaks are scheduled.
- Seize the moment. There’s no getting away from having to wait. You wait on hold on the telephone, wait for meetings and appointments, wait for hockey practice to end, a spouse to finish work, and wait and wait and wait. Waiting can eat up a fair portion of your time. Good time management puts waiting time to use. Make a list of tasks that take five, 10, or 20 minutes, and keep the materials you need to do these tasks handy. That way, when you’re put on hold or stuck in line, you can pull out that small job and finish it up.
- Emulate others. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. If someone else always seems to be ahead of the game, watch and learn. If someone else has a speedier way of doing something, copy it. If you’re having trouble getting specific jobs done, ask others how they organize and execute the task; perhaps you’ve overlooked some short cuts.
- Make work fun – Introducing a bit of fun into your work will make the day easier for you. Instead of looking at the negatives, try to look for the positives. Instead of looking for problems, try to look for opportunities. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, try to look for constructive solutions.
- Reward yourself – Celebrate the achievement of goals. Promise yourself a reward for completing each task, or finishing the total job. Then keep your promise to yourself and indulge in your reward. Doing so will help you maintain the necessary balance in life between work and play. Ann McGee-Cooper says, “If we learn to balance excellence in work with excellence in play, fun, and relaxation, our lives become happier, healthier, and a great deal more creative.”
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