We’ve all experienced the woes of time management at work. You wake up hopeful and optimistic not only will you meet all your deadlines, but you’ll hit the gym and make a healthy home-cooked meal, too.
Then life happens. Multi timer stopwatch You leave late, you hit traffic, and you arrive at your desk already frustrated with the world. Sitting down to finally knock out that project you’ve been procrastinating for weeks, you realize you’ve got back-to-back meetings until noon and yes, you’re already late for the first one. You finally walk out of the last meeting, and you start wading through emails when you get pulled into a meeting with the VP. He has a last-minute request for you. “It should only take an hour,” he says. Try three.
The good news is that there are ways to reclaim those seemingly elusive lost hours of the day. It’s all about personal time management—manage your time instead of letting it manage you. We’ve got ten time management tips for work to get you started
Figure out how you’re currently spending your time.
If you’re going to optimize your time management, you first need to figure out where the time is going. Online stop watch Try diligently logging your time for a week by tracking your daily activities. This audit will help you:
- Determine how much you can feasibly accomplish in a day.
- Identify timesucks.
- Focus on activities that provide the greatest returns.
As you conduct this time audit, it will become pretty clear how much of your time is spent on unproductive thoughts, conversations, and activities.
You’ll gain a more accurate sense for how long certain types of tasks take you (which will be very helpful for executing on a later tip). This exercise can also help you determine the time of day when you are most productive—that way, you know when to work on your projects requiring the most focus and creativity.
Create a daily schedule—and stick with it
This step is absolutely crucial for learning how to manage time at work. Don’t even attempt starting your day without an organized to-do list. Before you leave work for the day, create a list of the most pressing tasks for the next day. This step allows you to get going as soon as you get to the office.
Putting everything on paper will prevent you from lying awake at night tossing and turning over the tasks running through your brain. Instead, your subconscious goes to work on your plans while you are asleep, which means you can wake up in the morning with new insights for the workday.
If you can’t do it the day before, stopwatches online make sure you write out your list first thing in the morning. You’ll find that the time you spend creating a clear plan is nothing compared to the time you’ll lose jumping between tasks when you lack such a plan.
