5 Steps For Better Time Management
By: Jacqueline A
Tags: Work, Work Life Balance, Productivity, Self Improvement, Advice

Do you always feel like there are never enough hours in the day? Do you feel stressed thinking about the sheer volume of tasks you have to complete? Do you have so much to do and don’t even know where to start?

There are only 24 hours in the day, so if you have a lot to do, it is important to use your 24 hours to maximum effect. Time management is not about making you work harder and longer, it is about working smarter. It is about using our time productively.

Here are five steps to help you manage your time better.

1. Write a to-do list.

The list of tasks you need to complete should be written down. Don’t rely on your memory. The to-do list should be updated every day before you leave work. This ensures that as soon as you come in the next day, you can get started. You don’t have to spend half an hour in the morning thinking about which tasks to start with.

All uncompleted task should be carried over to the following day.

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” — Henry David Thoreau

2. Break large tasks into smaller tasks.

Breaking large tasks into their component elements not only makes them manageable but holds procrastination at bay.

If it is your responsibility to organise an award ceremony, writing “organise award ceremony” on your to-do list is not going to get it done. You need to break it down into the different task involved in organised the ceremony, such as; Find a suitable venue, confirm speakers, design invitation etc. These smaller manageable tasks can then be transferred onto your to-do list.

3. The items on the to-do list need to be prioritised.

The items on the list should be categorised under the following headings:

Urgent and important

Not urgent but important

Urgent but not important

Not urgent and not important

Categorising your tasks helps to identify which items on the list need to be done now, and which can wait.

If your friend Clara has come over to your desk to discuss where to go for lunch, this is neither important nor urgent. It can wait.

If one week before the award ceremony, the trophies have still not been purchased, purchasing them is both an important and urgent task. It is important because an award ceremony without the presentation of trophies/ awards will be a flop.

It is urgent because the engravers need time to do their engraving and the organisers need to check the engraved trophies before the event. With only one week before the event, there might not be much time to rectify any spelling mistakes.

If you are to prepare a sales forecast presentation for the board meeting in two weeks’ time, this task is important, but not urgent. It is important because the information in the presentation will be used to decide the strategic direction of the company. However, it is not urgent because you have two weeks to prepare the presentation.

Two days before the board meeting, if you are still waiting for the Finance department to provide you with crucial information for the presentation, the task now becomes both important and urgent.

“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” — Lee Iacocca

You are about to go into a meeting with an important prospect. Your colleague's phone is ringing off the hook, the Managing Director steps out of his office and looks at you like; “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Answering the phone is urgent, but not important. It is urgent because you need to do it NOW. It is not important because it will not add to the profits to the company. Whilst you deal with this non-urgent phone call, your prospect, who wants to place a large order with the company is waiting.

4. Allocate time for each task.

We have a tendency to under-estimate the time needed to successfully complete a task. You need to be realistic about the actual time required to complete a task. This will prevent you from feeling stress and disillusioned that you did not accomplish more in the day.

If you are going to spend three hours putting together a sales PowerPoint presentation, two hours in a meeting, one hour updating the database and an hour and a half dealing with customer complaints, that already accounts for seven and half hours of your day.

Based on the time it takes to complete your important and urgent tasks, you can clearly see that you cannot do much more before 5:30 pm.

There is no point feeling stressed that you did not accomplish more in your seven hours. You could not have done more yourself.

Use your previous experience to gauge how long it takes to complete a task. If you are performing the task for the first time, keep a mental record of how long it takes to successfully complete it.

5. Minimising distractions

It can be difficult to focus with the phone constantly ringing, demanding your urgent attention. Other disruptions such as email, social media and colleagues coming over to have a chat, can derail your day. What was supposed to be quick hello can easily turn into a half-hour conversation. A quick peek at FaceBook can result in a whole hour lost to social media.

Ways to minimise distractions include;

• Putting your phone on voicemail.

• Switching of social media.

• Turning off audio and visual notifications.

• Telling people who disrupt you, that you are busy. Suggest a more convenient time to meet with them.

• Scheduling time in your calendar for yourself. If you need two hours of uninterrupted time to work on a presentation, make a specific appointment with yourself to work on it. Block off the time in your calendar, so that you are unavailable.

• Isolating yourself. Book a meeting room for yourself and get your work done.

Time is a valuable, non-renewal resource. Once it is gone, it is gone. We can never turn back the clock, so it is a good idea to manage to the time we have.