4 Things You Should Do for Better Time Management as a Professional

Every person in the world has the same time to spend, 365 days per year, seven days per week, 24 hours per day. But every person has no that skill to manage the time effectively. This story describes how a profession can improve your time management skills. American author on personal time management, Alan Lakein said,

Time is life, and it cannot be changed and replaced. Wasting time means wasting energy, but controlling your time means controlling life and getting the maximum benefit.

You would have so many solutions if you were having this problem, time management. These tips will help you solve your time management problems and improve your proficiency in a more efficient, productive, and effective way rather than always busy. People have so much work to do when they succeed in their professional environment, and even extra time is needed to complete their tasks. Sometimes you may be busy on the weekend. Unfortunately, 90% of reasons and solutions for this problem is on your hand. You have the responsibility of your life where your destination is whether to the success or unsuccess.

What are the strategies you have to manage your time already?. Most of you haven’t a proper answer to this question. But some of you have an excellent procedure which you are following already. I will build up my discussion through the following four strategies. They are,

• Prioritizing
• Planning
• Analyzing
• Optimizing

1. Prioritize

In this section, you learn about how to rank the tasks by giving priorities for each job. If you are at the management level, then outline the importance of the delegation and list the factors to consider when you are delegating tasks. After you will learn about the importance of saying ‘No’.

If you are on a busy day, you feel all tasks are essential. So many tasks mixing together and need to give attention. At this moment, you are feeling more stressed. And the time is passing quickly without anything completing the to-do list. The answer is prioritization.

Each task has there importance. We need to find out the importance of each lesson and need to list those. Then you realize every task is not equally important. According to the “Eisenhower urgent/important principles,” The tasks can be divided into four phases below.

• Important and urgent
• Important but not urgent
• Not important but urgent
• Not important and not urgent

Let dive more to understand the critical and urgent words. Importance means The task should be completed. If it’s not completed, it will cause complications. The opposite of the important is unimportant means, acceptable if not satisfied. Urgency means The task should be completed today. Or the task can be complete in a week or during anytime period. So you can see the relevance of these techniques and how to prioritize your tasks.

When you’re at the management level, actual task delegation might help with your time management. Here you need to pay attention to the right tasks delegated to the right persons, and the end purpose of the delegation is to task suitably.

The power of saying “No.”

Sometimes our coworkers need help from you. At that time, we are saying “yes” mostly. But this may be caused to add task and waste of your time. Saying “No” can be difficult for us, but remember when we have full of tasks to do, It will help reduce your stress and pressure. And don’t forget to explain your situation to the coworker kindly. Or else you can suggest another coworker ask for help.

2. Plan

In this section, you are well aware of the importance of planning and time management. Do you have a question about why so many tasks are left undone at the end of the day? And Do you feel so much unsatisfied with the tasks you have achieved?. The reason is you have no real idea on how to execute the workflow on the day. If so, you need to spend a short time planning the day. A good plan is a roadmap with a precise beginning and an end. The quote below by Abraham Lincoln describes how planning helps you save time when you do the task.

give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe — Abraham Lincoln

If you are making a day plan, Goals are the milestones of your journey, your achievements, and the schedule details how you achieve goals.

Concept of Clustering

This is another concept of planning. However, experts suggest you don’t schedule more than 75% of your works. Extra time makes your freedom and time to breathe after each task. Cluster means that if you have a set of tasks in the same environment, you need to allocate specific time blocks for each job. Also, you can break your big tasks into small tasks and accomplish them separately. Please don’t mix the task on task, and then you will fail to do it efficiently. You can cluster a small set of periods as well.

To-Do list

This is another strategy to plan your time. All tasks are seen as a list, making you more comfortable and forget tasks. Also, once you finish a task, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Productivity will go high. When you are making the to-do list, Keep in mind to shortlist your works to one day. You can prioritize your tasks the way you prefer. But remember, the purpose is to control the time and increase productivity.

3. Analyze

This paragraph will understand the habits or behaviors that cause you to waste time and learn how to overcome them. Being a good time manager is to recognize the traps that lead to waste time. Think about yourself. What are your habits during work hours, chatting with others, political chatting, gossiping, checking social media apps, replying to messages, checking emails frequently, etc.? These habits break your concentration and waste your time ineffectively without any awareness. Here are a few solutions to tackle those practices.

• Restrict your personal internet using while you working, take the time to them at lunch break.
• Do not hesitate to use the “Busy” status on office instant messaging when you cannot afford to be distracted.
• Rather than writing everything in email, try to get a phone call or make a simple chat personally to reduce time.
• Discipline your self to use social media on a specific time of the day.
• Talk with your co-worker who is bothering you. Please kindly request them to contact you only in an emergency.
• If you have different types of social media account, try to avoid them slowly. Considering to delete them or reducing them to interact with, such as put them mute during work hours.
• The meeting can be a real time-waster at your work. This is because of poorly planned or too long. Therefore you need to plan for a clear agenda with clear meeting minutes.

Procrastination

This is another problem you should avoid. The action of postponing tasks is really caused by your time, and the following characteristics will lead to this problem.

• I put off habits until the last minute
• I tell myself it won’t really matter if I don’t do it.
• I underestimate the time needed to do the task
• I convince myself there is plenty of time left even If I start late.
• I tell myself I will do it later, or tomorrow or the next week.

Procrastination affects on your time badly. You will feel stressed at all. Your tasks are uncompleted at all. You cannot focus on what you are doing. Therefore many tasks are half done, and you fail to do them until the last minute. You cannot enjoy your offs because of those half-done things on your mind.

How do you avoid procrastination? These are a few tips to prevent it.

• Focus on the positive feelings generated by successfully completing your tasks on time.
• Promise yourself a motivational gift for each successful task you do on time. It may be food, clothing, or even a party or something.
• Talk to your coworkers to help you to beat the procrastination.
• Do the harder part of your job first and be positive the rest of part to do.

4. Optimize

This topic will help you to optimize some tools in your office environment which you work more efficiently.

Ergonomics

Your physical environment and equipment have played a role in your health and efficiency. Then, it would help if you studied to avoid those wrong tools. Good ergonomic depiction on suitable furniture and other user-friendly equipment. It will help to reduce health issues and make a healthy relationship between workers and the environment. Nowadays, most of companies used ergonomic assessment methods such as Rapid upper limb assessment(RULA), Rapid entire body assessment(REBA) (These two are survey-based methods) and ergonomic assessment devices(Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU), Kinect(imaging)) etc. These help to maintain a good practice of ergonomics of the environment and increase productivity. following elements should assess under good ergonomic rules,

1. Seating and equipment
2. Heavy Equipment
3. Noise
4. Light

How to Avoid Clutter in the workspace?

A cluttered space will be harmful in the following ways.

• You wasting the time when finding something lost in the clutter
• You may feel less organized and less professional if your workspace is clutter.
• This clutter environment interferes your focus and lose the track of important works.

Therefore you need to keep your workspace more simple. Use the saying, “A place for everything and everything in its place,” as a guideline. You can practice the 5s methodology to increase the quality and performance. The following 5s principles are delays reduction and productivity enhancement in the work environment.

Conclusion

At the end of the story you have learned how to prioritize, Planning, Analyze the factors and how to optimize your working environment. Also, a comment you're great ideas or ask any question has with this story in the response section below.

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