Time Management Techniques and Strategies
Time management becomes critical as professional and personal life demands collide; these tips on managing time will help make better use of your time.
Life has a tendency to become stressful, busy, and chaotic as you get older and more demands are placed on your time. Your boss needs a project completed by the end of the week, your spouse needs help with errands and is asking for a date night, your kids need help with homework and to play ball in the backyard, the garage needs cleaned, an e-mail needs to be written, and the dog needs to be walked.
How do you manage all of the demands placed on you and your time? How do you do what you need to do, please those that matter in your life (both professionally and personally), all while still taking care of yourself?
The answer lies in becoming a successful manager of your time. Time management is a crucial tool in navigating a busy and stressful life with grace and ease. You don’t have to live within feelings of inadequacy and being overwhelmed all the time. If you feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day to get what you need done, and interruptions are constantly taking you away from your important tasks, these tips on time management might help.
Time Management Tips
We all want to use our time better, increase productivity, and still have time for personal desires such as family or hobbies. Time management becomes a critical tool to possess as demands increase and these tips will help you make better use of your time.
Analyze where you spend your time. Analyze your days with a very objective outlook: how is your time spent? Do you hit the snooze button for fifteen minutes every morning when it would help to just get out of bed? Do you spend time on social networking websites such as twitter, facebook, blogs, etc, which can have a tendency to eat up precious hours? Do you watch tv for too long at night? We all need time to unplug, but these are easy ways to lose minutes of every day if that time is not managed well.
Analyze what needs to be done and prioritize your tasks. Are you spending a lot of time working on things that don’t need to be completed until next week while the urgent tasks are sitting in your inbox unanswered? Work first on the very important, very urgent matters, and then focus on the important, but non-urgent matters. You will learn how to live without the pressure and stress of last-minute cram sessions and will enjoy it.
Look ahead and plan out your entire week at the beginning of the week. Is there an important meeting on Thursday that you need to prepare for? Knowing that information on Sunday evening will take stress out of discovering that meeting on Wednesday night. Do you have dinner plans one night? A doctor’s appointment that will take away from work time on Friday? Look ahead each week to avoid last minute stress and devote the time to each activity that it deserves.
Work for twenty minutes at a time and then move on. If it is a large, time-consuming activity that you are dreading, breaking up the task will help you manage it better; then later in the day or week, return to it and work for another twenty minutes. Breaking up large tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks is much less daunting and will produce better work, and before you know it, it will be completed.
Reduce distractions. Close your e-mail inbox if you need to focus on reading a report. Put your cell phone on silent when writing an important piece. Turn off the television and focus only on the task at hand. Close your door to limit interruptions. Look at your calendar and block off an afternoon with no other plans if a large project needs undivided attention.
Time Management is Key to Succeeding in Varied Facets of Life
When work, home, personal time, and professional time all collide it can be difficult to distinguish which is the most important aspect to focus on at that moment in time. Balancing responsibilities and feeling successful in each facet is necessary, but it takes some intentional effort to make space for each aspect. These time management tools such as prioritizing tasks, analyzing where time is spent, reducing distractions, and looking ahead to plan all will help reduce personal stress and please both those at home and those at work.
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