Are you one of those people who believes that 24 hours a day is not enough to fulfill all the tasks you need to do? If your answer was yes, maybe this is the ideal time to learn about time management.
Of course, a person can (and usually does) have more than two or even five daily tasks. However, that can’t wear you down and hamper your productivity.
We are not doubting and much less questioning your tasks. In the end, we know how time can fall short, especially for who it is. The problem is when this becomes routine and you end up with no hours in the day to do everything you need to get done.
However, it is good that you know that, even with so many tasks, whether personal or professional, it is possible to organize yourself effectively to increase productivity and accomplish everything you planned, for example, through good time management. Know what it is? Keep reading and discover:
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Go for it!
What is time management?
Time management is the planning and execution of the administration of the periods of time necessary to carry out various activities, with the aim of generating greater productivity and efficiency.
Knowing for sure how long an action will take from start to finish makes it easy to define priorities, timelines, and goals that will help keep workflows clear of delays and consistently deliver results.
Objective of time management
More than ensuring the delivery of daily responsibilities, effective time management allows to increase the quality of processes and workflow in general.
Failure to meet deadlines and constantly operate on the deadline, are great triggers of stress and burnout that affect students, professionals and organizational leaders.
Through intelligent management, people will be able to obtain greater motivation and discipline to carry out their tasks and establish free time during their workday to fulfill their personal desires and responsibilities.
Why learn to manage time?
For an individual regardless of their area of expertise or for a company with dozens of collaborators, time management means:
- Reduce the efforts and costs necessary to fulfill your responsibilities and, at the same time, generate better results in less time.
- Reduce errors, waste and slowness in the process.
- Stimulate a more serene climate within the productive area.
- Obtain favorable results for the client or pending tasks.
examples of time management
Next, we will give you some examples of how companies and organizations have taken time management and managed to optimize it.
1. Engagement Software
Companies like Amazon or Apple use daily activity scheduling programs to calculate the time each one takes their collaborators.
There are several options on the market that allow you to program the time of tasks to meet daily goals individually and collectively and, in this way, obtain better results.
2. Appreciation as a work philosophy
Samsung and Microsoft use the power of gratitude as a fundamental part of their work processes in order to make them more productive.
Educating leaders and managers to demonstrate appreciation with their collaborators’ activities has helped keep them motivated and lead to better results in terms of time and productivity.
3. Communication to save time
In different organizations, it is common to see that the lack of communication negatively affects productivity and efficiency.
For this reason, there are various communication tools that are capable of bringing together and ordering interactions so that nothing is left up in the air and the correct information is always shown to those who need it in order to help you save time in your daily activities.
Tips for good time management
Now that you know what it is and why correct time management matters so much, we offer you 10 tips that can make your 24 hours a day enough to complete your activities.
1. Create a goal
To improve your time management you need to have an achievable goal.
Regardless of thinking about optimizing your time and increasing your productivity in personal or professional tasks, it is very important that you know that having a goal will help you better organize everything you need to do.
This happens because when you set a goal for yourself, you can think of ways to better plan your time and actions to reach that goal.
Therefore, try to set short, medium and long term goals. Thus, you will be able to set up strategies to achieve these objectives, focusing on a predetermined period for the completion of each task.
But be careful!
You don’t want to run before you walk. It is very common to set practically impossible goals. When you do this, in addition to not reaching them, it is very likely that you will get very tired and you will not be able to increase your productivity at any time of the day.
If you still want a little help with your goals, be sure to read more about and learn to define real and achievable goals.
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2. Make a list of your daily tasks
After defining your goal, you can start thinking about the actions you need to take to reach that goal.
For example:
If you have an online business and want to attract a larger audience for your sales page, you can think of actions such as:
After thinking of all you can do to reach your goal, put these actions on paper.
It is very important to have a document with a list of everything you need to do to reach your goal. This will help you not forget anything you have to do.
3. Prioritize what is urgent
With your to-do list in hand, it’s time to differentiate what is urgent from what can be extended.
Think of the actions that are most important to reach your goals and execute them before the other tasks.
Now do you understand the importance of the list that we talked about in the previous point?
When you’ve written down everything you need to do, it’s easier to understand what’s most important and can’t be left for later.
However, you must be careful not to prolong the other activities too much. If you leave everything for later and do not establish an order and a schedule with a start and end date for all your activities, you will end up doing nothing.
So even if you can accomplish a task later, don’t forget to also run it at some point in your day, which is what we’ll talk about next.
4. Have a calendar
with planned start and end dates for each activity, it is something that helps a lot when it comes to managing your time.
Every time you set deadlines, you send intuitive commands to your brain that will remind you that something needs to be completed by that deadline.
With that, even if you have prioritized the most urgent and important tasks, you will never forget about the other activities that you need to do later.
We advise you to use your Monday mornings to plan your weekly calendar. Thus, you will think about planning only for the nearer future, which can help you manage your time better.
It is clear that there are some time-consuming tasks that will probably only be able to be executed in 1 or 2 months. However, if you already know about their existence, put them on your calendar so that when the due date for those activities approaches, you will remember that you need to complete them.
5. Do one thing at a time
It is useless to organize your tasks in order of importance and schedule your calendar with start and end dates, if you do everything at the same time.
As we said at the beginning of this article, we know that it is very likely that you have many things to do throughout the day. However, if you try to cover everything at once, you will not be able to finish any activity, everything will be left in the middle and that can be even more tiring.
That is why you need to focus on a task to be able to use 100% of your potential in it. In this way you will realize that you will manage to finish it in the time that you scheduled previously and you will still do your tasks in the most complete way possible.
Little by little, you will realize that organization and focus on one activity at a time will help your time management, which will be better managed.
6. Avoid procrastination
Even when you have to do more than one activity at a time, it is very important that you do not put off what you can do now for later.
A very common mistake made by people who cannot do good time management is to procrastinate. Extending your deadlines too long makes you lose focus on the tasks that need to be done.
For this reason, all the advice shown here should be formulated as a whole. When you set deadlines to deliver certain tasks, even if it is a distant date, do not lose sight of it thinking that you do not have to do anything now to complete that activity.
If you have time today to start something that you have to deliver in two weeks, why not start and then have some more time for other activities or unforeseen events that may arise?
7. Organize your work environment
Having a well-organized work environment helps a lot with time management. This is because, with an organized place, you won’t waste time looking for something you need.
Therefore, even if you are, always have a separate space to perform tasks related to your business.
In this environment, put everything you need throughout the day close to you, such as a computer, phone, notebooks, pens, and if possible, even a nice cup of coffee and a bottle of water.
8. Take breaks
Even with so many activities to do, it is very important to understand that you also need time to rest.
We know that many people, especially when they are very busy, think that it is necessary to work non-stop all the time. However, this is a great indication that you are not doing good time management.
Also, this is also not productive, as a person with a tired mind and body does not have a good productivity.
So, take breaks during your tasks and don’t forget to get a good night’s sleep every day.
A technique widely used by various professionals to help manage time during a break is the Technique Pomodoro. To carry out activities using this technique, you will only need a stopwatch, which can even be the one on your mobile phone.
Basically, what you will do is:
- Use the list you made of all the tasks you need to accomplish during the day.
- Divide your time into periods of 25 minutes (calls from pomodoros) and set your stopwatch with those minutes.
- Choose one of the tasks that need to be done that day and work on it without interruption.
- Take a short break of 5…
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