Work Time Management: How to Choose Priorities.
Find out the best way to be proficient and increase your productivity following these effective tips on how to manage your time.
It is a kind of thing that happens to everybody, every day. Every morning we arrive in our office, we drink our coffee and we do not know where to start, every night we go to sleep, and we don’t know how to organize the next day. We simply have so many things to do, all of them are important, or rather so it seems. When I first started working, I knew that one of the most important things to understand was: how to manage my working time succeed to be able to do everything?
I realized that if my time was well organized, also things to do will be organized.
But, how to choose priorities? Let me tell you about my own method!
What, when, how?
First of all, to figure out what where to start, I have to establish two things:
- What are the tasks that only I can take care of because they are assigned to me?
- What are the things that must be done as soon as possible (or we should have done it yesterday, damn it)?
Establish these things is not very difficult, it is enough to take some time in the morning when we arrive at the office, or in the evening before going home, and think about what we have to do.
Personally, in the morning, I try to get to the office a little earlier than expected and take some time to re-read my to-do list and after that, start! To figure out what you need to prioritize you must have clear in mind what do you consider important. The concept of “importance” has very subjective value, but when we are at work (especially when we work in a group), it is necessary to be as objective as possible. In addition, everyone must have their own role in mind.
Plan everything in advance
The second step, once we established the tasks assigned to us and we have understood which are the most urgent and important we can prepare a to-do daily list. When we prepare a to-do list, we must always have to predict how much time we need to carry out a task. Once it has been established how much time we need, we can also understand how many tasks we can accomplish in our working time.
Always remember to provide breaks in our to do list, or better coffee-breaks, to allow us to survive our daily work routine.
In an ideal world, we should plan an extra-time for every task in case of emergencies, or error, or any kind of impediment. Ok, maybe I’m asking too much, but let’s be real: in a company contingency is the agenda!
Breathe, take your time. Think about your tasks and get organized!
MIT & Eisenhower Matrix
Now, let’s get specific. If you ask me how do I plan my daily work routine, my answer will be MIT: Most Important Things!
They are my daily tasks which I must absolutely do, I establish them every day for the day after and once I have checked those, I take care of the others. Obviously, I always take into account the two variables: what is assigned to me and what is more urgent.
Of course, this is my method, it is good for me and for my kind of job, but there is another time management system that I’d like to share with you, the Eisenhower Matrix:
- Green: what to do immediately.
- Blue: important but not urgent.
- Orange: just delegate!
- Red: not important or not urgent, stay away from it!
Wrapping up
In this article, I shared a couple of concepts I found helpful across my working experiences, the time management topic is always very personal and related to your habits, job, and of course, your priorities. I hope they could help you to be more productive and efficient in all your daily tasks.
Comments, shares, and discussion about the topic are always accepted and I’ll be glad to answer any of your questions!
Thanks for reading the article! 🎉
