Effective time management is a skill that’s applicable to all walks of life. If you’re doing work of any kind, then the chances are good that you’ll be able to do it more efficiently with the right time management in place. What’s more, good time management confers benefits in your personal life, too. You’ll be able to do things more quickly, to a higher standard, and with less stress. You’ll get more career opportunities and more time to do the things that really matter to you.
How to do it?
Let’s run through what time management is, and how to do it better.
Decide your goals
If you don’t know what you’re planning to do, then you’ll struggle to do it in the first place. What’s more, you might find that your time runs away from you. Focus on breaking your major goals down into smaller tasks that can be easily completed. That way, you can more easily track the progress you’re making, and see where improvements are necessary.
Use deep work
Where you have the time to devote multiple hours to a particular task, you should make sure that you use them on the tasks that demand the most creativity and attention. You can get through low-focus tasks, like answering emails, during other smaller stretches of time.
Prioritize
Some tasks are more important than others. You should have a means of differentiating between them and prioritizing accordingly. Put less urgent tasks on the backburner in favour of more urgent ones.
Have a digital calendar
If you’re doing your work on a computer, then having a digital calendar available can be enormously beneficial. You can use it to provide you with daily reminders of what work needs to be done, and what deadlines are looming. For example, when you book an MOT online, you might put an entry into your digital calendar so that you don’t miss it.
Avoid perfectionism
For a perfectionist, it’s difficult to draw a line under a task and move onto the next one. The net result of this is that you end up never getting the tasks completed. Where possible, you should look to eliminate this behaviour – perhaps by imposing your own, stricter deadlines on top of the ones imposed on you from the outside world.
Reduce your social media usage
The more time you spend on social media, the more your attention will be fragmented and diverted away. Impose strict limits on your social media time, especially during working hours. You might even use a special program to block certain programs and websites at certain times of the day. Failing that, you can take the nuclear option and delete your social media accounts immediately.
