Whether a corporate setup or entrepreneurship, everywhere time management tricks & skills are critical. Most of the people complain that they do not have enough time to achieve things. They are consistently working but not on the things that make an impact on work or business. In fact, they are spending time responding to emails, arranging meetings, and low-value activities.
There must be a better way to manage time.
Here, are some of the effective time management strategies that busy people can implement and invest their time on important things:
Organize Work as Per Energy Levels
If you decide the job based on energy level, you can calculate your productivity for each day.
Determine the high energy or peak hours to do the most productive work whereas doing low energy tasks such as responding to emails in the low-value hours. Also, cleaning your desk and update your spreadsheets may not be critical tasks but you can complete it right after your lunch hours when you are feeling sleepy.
You can also organize your week like this:
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Monday: Because energy is the least after the weekend, do the low demand tasks such as goal orientation and planning things on Monday.
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Tuesday and Wednesday: Take the most difficult things for these days, such as solve the critical tasks, do primary analysis, prepare those pitch, and write for your business.
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Thursday: When energy seems to lower down – call for all the long-term pending meetings. Do all the unnoticed yet essential tasks.
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Friday: Focus on building and strengthening relations with the team. Finish all that you planned to do this week and could not. Let the Fridays be light yet satisfactory for the coming joy.
Your Day Begins a Night Before
When you know that it is your time to go-to-sleep, take your pen and paper for five minutes. Start writing your to-do list for the next day. It will suggest you upcoming work challenges and how you can solve them. Also, if it calls for making any calls or emails, you can do it right away.
Let your mornings be fresh and productive. Don’t let any worries to carry forward for the next day.
And when you have written down what you need to do, there will be less hustle waiting for the next day.
Delegate and Outsource
Outsourcing Lays Your Information in Jeopardy
Once you can understand which task is urgent and which is essential, you will find ways to get those tasks done. You will also find someone whom you can outsource these tasks, and that is how you will multiply the efforts.
But, outsourcing needs to follow a few steps.
These are the things you need to know before you delegate the tasks.
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Conduct the hunt for the right person: The quest for the right person will end when you find someone who has the right skills set to complete it. Try business process outsourcing or virtual assistant services.
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Define the process: Along with the tasks, your VA should follow one right format to complete and deliver the work. For example, share a common google drive link to visit and review every deliverable.
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State the expectations: The expected results should be crystal clear. The deadline for every delegated task should be pre-defined.
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Questions and Clarifications: Whenever you delegate tasks, be ready to address the concerns, questions, and give the required clarifications.
Create a List of Priorities
Making a list of priorities doesn’t mean listing 20 to-do things in the directory. If you have 20 items in the list it means you are rushing to complete them all but is not putting efficiency in everything. The right way to prioritize is to put five things on the list and try to achieve them by the end of the day.
By chance, if you complete them before time, you can add another few things. But it is vital to list out things. You should not juggle with low-value activities and let miscellaneous items creep in.
Make Time Blocks
Yes! You know what all you need to do within a day but every business should have a specific amount of time. It is possible to become productive when you give only a particular time to particular tasks because your mind works under the timeline that the functions need to be completed. And, that is how your brain works in the right direction to finish the task.
As an example:
If you have to reply to an email, set only 10 minutes instead of 15 or 20 minutes. Your mind will start functioning faster, and you will try to match with the time limit. Your time limit will set an urgency, push you towards completing the tasks and will stop you from wasting time on social media websites.
Track Time
It is easy to guess how much time you have spent on a job but trying to tell the exact number of minutes. Take the help of any modern or on-the-go time tracking an application as it will help you identify where your time is going.
It will show up the insights into the way you can improve your productivity. When you start seeing patterns, you will be able to know where the time is leaking. Then you can attack the leak hours and make a plan to utilize it in the best way.
With time tracking tool, you will get a clear picture of your productive hours and ways to optimize it.
Simplify Life (Know the Time Management Tricks)
We all! Yes, we all have a habit of wasting our efforts in many places. There is a lot of ways you can save time while binge-watching Netflix.
Trust me and follow these hacks. You will experience a hike in your hours. You will start doing things that matter without feeling tired.
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Choose your week’s outfits on Sunday rather than doing it every day.
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Subscribe to daily fruits and vegetables so that it can be delivered directly to your home.
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Your snack or sports bag can be left in your car. So, even if you are getting late, there is not much loss you are doing to your day.
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Buy two chargers of every gadget that you have. One should be part of your room, and another should be a part of your car.
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Managing and transferring money can be a pain sometimes. Let your paycheck always go to your savings account, every time. Regulate your money from only one place; it is the way to avoid money hassle.
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Attach your Gmail to Dropbox or any cloud storage. Every time you email gets an attachment; it will automatically get saved in an appropriate folder.
Don’t Run after Perfectionism
If you are always trying to do things perfectly, you are not completing jobs on time.
Sometimes delivering a thing on time is the skill you need. Learn to accept that every time details don’t matter. You can even complete a job with basic requirements, shoot, and fix the flaws later as well.
A continuous art of learning and improving is better than being in an endless cycle of perfectionism.
One thing at a time
Multitasking is not the right way that you aim.
Understand that every brain is designed to do one thing at a time. Fast switching between the tasks is very likely to make mistakes. Don’t try to check all the notifications on your phone while doing the job. Close all the extra tabs in your phone and laptop. Give enough time to do the pending task and move to the next, only when you’re done.
We are always trying to achieve more than we can. A continuous mistake that we do in the process is by trying to do multitasking. Let your brain utilize and invest all the energy only in one direction; the results will be tremendous.
Don’t Miss the Fun
We get caught up in the busyness and forget to enjoy what we’re doing. Let every task that you do involve motivation, concentration, and fun while you are doing it. Involve fun in everything you do, and you won’t have to refer to time management techniques anymore.
For now, try applying at least 5 of these techniques to your schedule and notice the elevation in your happiness, work satisfaction, and personal growth. It will make you realize how to put the same 24 hours to use but with different style.
