10 Practical Ways to Drastically Improve Your Time Management Skills
Do you often feel stressed out with too much of workload? As time passes by, do you feel like you have more tasks on hand than you have time to do them or you could have effectively use your time to complete all the given tasks?
The trick is to organize your tasks and use your time effectively to get more things done each day. This can help you to reduce stress and do better at workplace.
Time management is a skill that takes time to develop and is different for each person. You just need to find what works best for you.
Here are 10 ways that you can use to improve time management skills and increase productivity:
1. Delegate tasks
It is common for all of us to take more tasks than our desired potential. This can often result in stress and burnout.
Delegation is not running away from your responsibilities but is an important function of management.
2. Prioritize work
Before the start of the day, make a list of tasks that need your immediate attention. Unimportant tasks can consume much of your precious time. Some urgent tasks need to be completed on that day only while other unimportant tasks could be carried forward to next day.
In short, prioritize your important tasks to focus on those that are more important.
3. Schedule tasks
Carry a planner or notebook with you and list all the tasks that come to your mind.
Make a simple ‘To Do’ list before the start of the day, prioritize the tasks and focus on the essentials. Make sure that these tasks are attainable too.
4. Set up deadlines
When you have a task at hand, set a realistic deadline and stick to it.
Try to set a deadline few days before the task so that you can complete all those tasks that may get in the way. Challenge yourself and meet the deadline; reward yourself for meeting a difficult challenge.
5. Avoid procrastination
Procrastination is one of the things that badly affect productivity. It can result in wasting essential time and energy. It could be a major problem in both your career and your personal life.
6. Avoid stress
Stress often occurs when we accept more work than our ability. The result is that our body starts feeling tired which can affect our productivity.
7. Avoid multitasking
Most of us feel that multitasking is an efficient way of getting things done but the truth is that we do better when we focus and concentrate on one thing. Multitasking hampers productivity and should be avoided to improve time management skills.
Make use of to-do lists and deadlines to help you stay focus! This way you can do better at what you’re doing.
8. Start early
Most of the successful men and women have one thing in common — they start their day early as it gives them time to sit, think and plan their day. Here’s the reason why productive people always wake up early.
When you get up early, you are more calm, creative and clear-headed. As the day progresses, your energy levels starts going down which affects your productivity and you may not perform as well.
9. Take regular breaks
Whenever you find yourself for 10-15 minutes, take a break. Too much stress can take a toll on your body and affect your productivity.
Even better, schedule your break times. It helps you to relax and gets back to work with energy again later.
Take a walk, listen to some music or do some quick stretches. The best idea is to take off from work and spend time with your friends and family.
10. Learn to say no
Politely refuse to accept additional tasks if you think that you’re already overloaded with work. Take a look at your ‘To Do’ list before agreeing to take on extra work.
Now that you’ve learned all these practical time management tips, start from listing out everything you need to do, prioritize them and decide what can delegate to others. Then schedule the tasks with deadlines set and schedule your break times too.
When you get clear about what’s on your plate, you’ll not get distracted by others and you’ll get more done in less time!
Good time management skills come from daily practice of prioritizing tasks and organizing them in a way that can save time while achieving more.
This post originally appeared on www.lifehack.org
