Time Management Tips
Time management is not just about meeting deadlines. It can help you stay organized, reduce stress, and keep you from forgetting important things. It’s about setting goals, balancing multiple projects, and giving yourself a work-life balance. Poor time management leads to more stress and greater difficulty in managing your career. While time management is not always intuitive, it is a skill that can be developed and honed. The following tips can help you better use your time and resources and build a more effective, organized professional life.
Utilize Calendars for Better Time Management
One of the best tricks to help you stay organized and on top of multiple projects and deadlines is using visuals. Whether this be a physical calendar, a google calendar, or another organization software, having a visual way to see what projects you’re working on and what timeline you’re running by can help you keep track of projects and manage your time.
Calendars allow you to see your week and month in advance; you can look ahead towards deadlines and break up projects into smaller pieces. You can color code by projects to give you an instant idea of what projects need to be handled and when. Calendars can also be collaborative; you can add and share meetings with others, and they can add meetings and tasks to your calendar. You can even have multiple calendars so you know when your personal and professional life might be colliding. Calendars are a simple but effective way to manage your time and be in control of your day-to-day.
Break Up Large Projects into Smaller Chunks
When taking on a big project, the deadline can feel looming and overwhelming, even when it’s first handed to you. Breaking up large projects into smaller chunks allows you to see the project in the big picture. Start by listing out every step needed to get the project done; you can be as detailed or vague as you like. Then, think about how much time you need to get each step complete. Once you’ve done that, look at your calendar and block out times you can dedicate to crossing each step off the list. Give yourself extra time in case of delays or to check over your work. Doing this not only improves organization over projects but allows you to plan your use of time before getting started.
Minimize Distractions
Picture this: you’re working on a big assignment due in the next couple days. You’re almost towards the end, and you’re deep in the zone. Then, your phone buzzes. Then it buzzes again. And again. We’re all guilty of it; distractions are some of the most common time-sucks professionals run across, and they’re the easiest to minimize. When settling in to get to work, turn your phone on silent, or turn it off all together. If you’re working on a solo project with a tight deadline, let your coworkers know you’re going to be busy and to check back in with you later in the day. Giving yourself the space to get in the zone and not be interrupted will help you work faster and more efficiently.
Leave Work at Work
It is imperative as a busy professional to balance work and home life. There will always be other commitments outside of work, and these things are important to your life as well. When trying to balance work and home life, try and keep your physical spaces for work and home separate. If you work in an office, leave the work there. Try to avoid bringing work home or going back to the office for just one more thing. Once you are home, stay at home and take that time for yourself and your family. If you work from home, see if you can find a space that’s dedicated just for work. It might be a home office, or it could be a small desk in the corner of another room. Wherever it is, keep work to that space and that space alone. It can be easy to let work follow you around, nagging at you when you’re trying to rest and relax. By keeping it properly separated, you can train your brain to understand physical spaces as correlating with certain actions and thought patterns: the office is for work, and home is not.
Staying organized can be a feat when you’re a busy professional. With so much on your plate, it can feel like a chore to take a pause to begin organizing when you’re trying to get so much done in the first place. These tips and tricks, however, are ones that can be implemented throughout your workday and can support your time management practices, giving you back your work day.