Time Management Problems? – Follow These Tips to See an Improvement

It is always a shame when people have great opportunities and talent at their fingertips, but manage to ruin them by having poor time management. Being late to interviews, auditions, dates and more, can give off a poor impression, especially when there is another party involved. What use is a talented employee if they are constantly late, disrupting the workflow and the environment. If this sounds like you, or you have seen opportunities fall by the wayside because of your poor time management, this article is just for you. Below are a few steps you could follow in order to improve your time management, especially in a professional setting.

1) Create a to-do list

This could be useful for every aspect of your life – before you sleep, or as soon as you wake up, write a to-do list of the tasks needed to be completed that day, and leave space for additions. By keeping your personal life organised, this could make it easier to deal with in a professional setting, where there are more external pressures.

Use a digital to-do list on your phone and add tasks to the calendar, reminding you of what needs to be completed. It may help to organise them according to different criteria and urgency. Check them off once completed, and remember, consistency is key!

2) Make use of technology

As mentioned in the previous point, you could use a digital to-do list on your phone, which is useful in that it can keep all your records in one place, and you can access them from different devices. In this day and age, you are more likely to be carrying your phone around with you rather than a pen or paper

If your place of work has a visitor management system, utilize this to streamline your meetings process. No longer will you need to constantly update your schedule and inform participants manually. By using technology to your advantage, you could improve your time management by eliminating tasks that menial and time consuming in the first place.

3) Avoid multitasking – stick to one task at a time

For some reason, over the years we have been accustomed to trying to look as busy as possible in the workplace, as apparently this gives us the image that we are being productive. An obvious example of this when we multitask, this makes us appear busy, and therefore productive. In reality this is far from the truth – multitasking is actually more inefficient as we are not able to give our best attention to the tasks at hand. Complete your tasks one at a time, in order of urgency, and not only will you realise your time management improving, but the quality of work will see an improvement.

4) Avoid distractions

This may be difficult if you work in an open-plan environment, but do your best to focus on the work at hand and not the funny Youtube or Instagram videos being sent around. While working, put your phone on “silent” or “do not disturb” to help reduce unnecessary distractions, or log-out of social media all together. If you have chatty co-workers, have a talk with them beforehand and intimate that you will be needing to focus on work. This may be quite forward, but it will certainly help improve your ability to complete tasks in a timely manner.