6 Time Management Tips That Will Boost Your Career!

When a day begins, a person may find that they have so much to accomplish and get done. How then is it possible to accomplish so much within a day? Time management may not be easy for everyone and thus, a well-organized schedule helps one in managing their time well and being able to deliver. There are people who prefer to get by a day simply by accomplishing what a day’s mood and feeling may offer. A schedule does not really matter to them, they say. Nevertheless, time management is essential in getting things done and accomplished well.

We all have a different approach to our work and daily routine. There are people who live each moment and tackle what comes their way at that moment, awaiting what comes next. Such an approach has a close friend not being able to receive her expected outcome and promotion. It would help such a person to consider writing down what they do at work each hour each day for a period of one week. The list would most likely answer their query on why they are not getting the expected outcome and promotions, maybe some of the actions include much time wasted that they would imagine. A good example is time spent on social media sites during work hours. Am sure this is something most of us are familiar with at work.

It is many times easy to get distracted at work when you lack clearly set out goals of that which you intend to accomplish everyday. If you wish to achieve your professional goals, a key skill to learn first is time management. This can be achieved in various ways.

Start by finding out where your time at work goes

Keep track of your time for a period of one week and later review analyze the outcome.

Follow this plan before starting the actual work

Sit alone at a quiet place for a few minutes and structure your week prior. Note down the important assignments and projects that you intend to accomplish. After planning, List down the projects in order of importance.

Write Your list in a way that you can see the very important activities moving down to the ones that are least important.

Then grab your calendar and Block time on the calendar

Plan the time you will require to finish your most important work and projects in that specific week. Also set out time for you to handle your other activities. In case there is not much time for the lesser priority tasks, consider pushing back some of the requests, get more time or consider working longer hours.

Reduce emails and social media time

Set aside a certain time for checking your email and other sites, especially at the beginning of the day, it can also be before or after lunch, and before closing the day. Checking email at all times, can be a big time waster and a distraction from your high-priority tasks.

The more time disciplined one becomes, the more of their professional goals become easier to accomplish. All it requires is scheduling and planning.

Time management is without a doubt one of the most rewarding skills that could take you to great heights in life, be it personal life or professional life. If you fail in managing your time well, before you know it you would find yourself in a state of mayhem and rush, no order at all. Time, being such an important part of life, should be treated in the most cautious and respectful way. Should we learn to adapt the skill of time management, our lives would experience very positive change.To manage each single minute in your life, you should know what effective time management is and the way to manage time.

Definition

Time management is proper planning of tasks and events to make the most of the output of a person’s efforts. Ideally, time management is supporting people to get better results from work done in shorter time.

Why time management is important

Learning how to manage time could help yield a positive result especially in your professional life and career, where most of us fail at giving the required time to each setand planned task. Good time management has many key benefits including Better work and projects management, better and higher productivity, reduced stress levels to meet deadlines, Better work and life balance.

On the other view, if you are not able to manage your time well, you are likely to experience adverse results and outcome like unmet deadlines, rushed and low work quality, High stress levels, Work imbalance, and high chances of a burnout

With good time management, employees can well and properly manage their work hours good results. When things go as planned, employees end up being more creative, are happier, and are less prone to burnout at work. Therefore, it is wise to take some time to learn about time management techniques for the good of your career.

What are time management skills?

There are people who seem to always have adequate time to do all they want to do while some are always swapping from one task to another. This means that one who is able to do everything they want to be the one who uses their time well and practices proper time management. Time management skills are a set of different skills that help one to manage time well. The skills include staying organized at all times, giving priority to what you need to accomplish, Setting goals very clearly, very Strong communication skills, Effectively scheduling your day, Practicing delegating some tasks and Handling stressful situations in a positive way.

How can one improve their time management skills?

Having known the importance of time management, you equally need to use these useful tips to manage your time effectively. Here are time management tips and techniques to attain great success.

1. Waking up early

We all get 24 hours in each day. It may not be possible to change the number of hours in any day but you can try waking up earlier as it will make your day longer than when you wake up late. Generally, your body needs 6–8 hours of sleep for you to be at your best energy levels.

Begin by setting up your alarm about 15 minutes earlier than usual and increase the time frame as time goes by. You can make use of this additional time to do some exercise, to meditate, to prioritize, or even to do a hobby. With time, you will have an increase in your daily productivity and for you, time management will never be a problem.

2. Set smart and achievable goals

Did you know that there exists a right and a wrong way to set goals? When your goals are not resulting in any benefits, then something is missing in your approach and way of doing things. While on the other hand if you set your goals the right way, then your productivity could reach the sky.Specific, Measurable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals could bring a firm structure to your work life and equip you for that which is in store for you that day.

3. Handle important tasks in the morning

It was once said, “Eat a live frog every morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.” The point of this is to handle the most important projects as the first thing when you start working in the morning. And, if you have two or more tasks to handle then it is advisable to begin with the hardest tsk.

Time management and prioritization both go together. You can manage your time effectively only when you know what is supposed to be done when. The point is to take up a hard or time-consuming task, accomplish it, and focus on other things.

4. Discover your zone

You must have taken note of that at specific hours you are as focused as an eagle and your productivity goes up at that time. This happens when your mind is in total harmony with the external environment. Some call it ‘flow’ while some call it their ‘zone’.

Discovering your zone can help you to contribute to the right use of your time. It helps you reach an optimal state of self when you feel and perform at your best.

5. Avoid distractions

Emails, phone calls, and social media content are some of the famous yet biggest distractions at the workplace. So much so, that statistics show you end up wasting as many as 759 hours each year all thanks to workplace distractions.

When you are working on very important tasks, put your phone on silent mode and turn your internet or data off. You would end up saving so much of your time and take your efficiency levels on a higher notch.

6. Track your time

The easiest ways to keep track of each minute that is spent at work is by having a time management software. Such software are designed to have time estimates, track any time spent on tasks and keep a record of each minute you spend while working on projects at work.

If for instance you are working on a task, you can have a time estimate for every task and subtask to allow you to manage your time best. You can use time management software such as Proof Hub to manage your tasks and time efficiently.Proof Hub is a software used in to tracking time for good time management. The software that will bring all time data in one place. With this software, one can do the following:

· Increase timesheets

More timesheets can be added to record time data, and this can be used for payroll, client billing, tracking, and even for good time management.

· Set time estimates

When you time estimates, it is a good way to manage time as you are able to define the much time it should take to get accomplish your work. With this you have a clear show when the time taken exceeds the set estimated time.

· Track your time manually

You can record in the time taken to Use multiple trackers to tra o have work done and track manually the exact time spent for all hours.

· Export timesheets

Export some timesheets and use them for clients invoicing, payroll, and for time management.

· Archive timesheets

Archive timesheets for later use.

This help to view logged time.

7. Avoid multitasking

If you take a lot of pride in juggling many tasks at once, here’s some news for you. A research shows that only 2% of people can multitask well. For the remaining 98%, multitasking is actually wasting time and reducing their overall productivity.

Other than dividing your attention into different things, it’s better to focus fully on one thing and do well at it. To make it even more effective, try time sparring them. This is the act of allocating a time-frame for each project which in return, increases the chances of its successful accomplishment.

8. Take small breaks often

This may sound conflicting but taking breaks is one of the effective time management tips. Assume two scenarios. In the first scenario, imagine a team member who is working on a project for 5–7 hours at a stretch. And, then imagine another team member is working on a similar project with frequent small breaks. Who would you think is utilizing his time best? Of course, the later.

Good time management isn’t always about having to do something or the other. Good time management also emphasizes on that little breaks more often can increase your productivity to a better level.

All these factors herein discussed and more are useful in managing time well at work and in life as well. When you decide to manage time for better productivity, it is good to take each step towards achieving your goal as it is not easy and everything takes time to become a well grown habit in us as human beings.

Originally published at https://www.howsitlike.com.