Knowing how to adequately manage your time is critical to ensuring good work performance and maintaining a healthier routine. With this in mind, we have selected seven points that successful professionals have to teach us about time management. Learn more!
Are you usually late for appointments and unable to perform all your daily tasks? Have you ever wished your day lasted more than 24 hours? In reality, you can keep up with your calendar appointments and do even more. All you need is to fine-tune your time management.
Being able to better manage your time means knowing how to organize and plan the various daily tasks, always focusing on quality when performing each task. With proper scheduling, it is possible to tackle the adversities of everyday life.
Knowing how to adequately manage your time is critical to ensuring good work performance and maintaining a healthier routine. With this in mind, we have selected seven points that successful professionals have to teach us about time management. Learn more!
1. Identify your priorities
A good way to start managing your time efficiently is to identify your priorities. It is important to observe which tasks you spend the most time on, and to assess whether you really need to do them. Set specific times to use your phone, access social networks, chat with colleagues, and more.
To evaluate your situation, use Excel and lists to help you organize your activities by importance, doing the most urgent tasks first. For example, you can divide them into categories and deadlines, separating them between those that need immediate attention and those that can be carried out during the week.
2. Set deadlines
For many people, having fixed deadlines is a fantastic way to stay focused, as the pressure of the due date serves as a motivation to finish a particular task.
You can set deadlines even to accomplish the most menial activities that, in theory, do not have a fixed end date. When defining the deadline, account for contingencies, as we know they can appear.
In this context, if your boss gives you a project to be delivered on Friday, for example, aim to finish it by Thursday, so you can have enough time to review all the work already produced. This will help you to achieve well-organized time management.
3. Perform one task at a time
Some people are always in a hurry and, eager to solve problems, end up doing everything at the same time. To multitask is, in many cases, to overestimate your own abilities. This can be detrimental to your time management and can therefore decrease your productivity.
That is, professionals work best when they focus on one task at a time. This idea can also be applied to the management of your personal activities. Performing several tasks at the same time is often a sign of disorganization.
Instead, avoid the temptation of checking emails when preparing a report. Avoid unnecessary stress and spare your physical and mental health: do not embrace more than you can accomplish in your day.
4. Use technology to your advantage
Do not hesitate to make good use of this powerful ally to time management. Nowadays, there are several apps and tools that serve as calendars and task managers to make your life easier. Here are some examples:
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Todoist: an app that helps you remember menial tasks;
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Pomodoro Timer: an app to time your production and rest phases;
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Evernote: a personal organizer that allows you to register your appointments and save files and web pages for later reference;
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HabitBull: a tool that uses charts to help monitor your common habits and identify which ones drain your time;
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AnyDo: a task manager that allows you to concentrate all your tasks in one place;
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Trello: a versatile app that helps you manage your tasks through lists, which can be customized according to the needs of the user; in it, it is possible to organize work activities, events, projects, studies, and priorities.
5. Respect your need for rest
Good time management also involves setting aside times for resting. After all, our brain is slower when we are tired, which demonstrates the importance of a rested mind for productivity.
You may have noticed that when you are rested and relaxed you are able to produce more in less time without compromising the quality of the task. Value time with your family, play sports, read about other subjects, watch good movies, and sleep and eat well. These activities are also crucial to your professional and personal performance.
6. Value cleanliness and organization
It may sound cliché, but living and working in a clean, organized place makes all the difference. Organization is the first step to good time management. We do not want you to become cleaning-obsessed, but rather to create your own organization system, one that fits into your routine and allows you to not waste time in the midst of confusion.
The idea is that you do not spend your time on activities that can be avoided, as errors make you waste many minutes to redo the work. So, evaluate which organization system is the best fit for you.
For example, you can write everything down in a notebook or make a digital list, and create patterns and rules for your folders, drawers, files, and documents.
7. Create time-management metrics
Metrics should be used for anything that we want to evaluate and perfect with precision. After all, with all the tools within our reach, we should no longer rely on guesswork to evaluate situations and make decisions.
Metrics are critical to time management, because they allow you to better visualize your personal and professional performance. You can start by establishing your goals, a deadline for action, or form of measurement.
That is, choose a common day-to-day task to use as an indicator, something that can be measured, such as writing reports. Make notes in a file every time you perform this task; at the end of the month, you will have your monthly indicator. In the following months, you will have a monthly average of your production.
Thus, you will be able to compare your productivity over time and to identify at what times your productivity has decreased, so that you can better plan your time and perform your tasks with higher quality. It is worth noting that effective time management is an individual endeavor. However, it is important for everyone in the team to stay focused.
If you feel that you are prepared to produce more and feel less tired with the use of time management, please write in the comments section about your experiences with this subject.