Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of the time spent on specific activities to work smarter than harder.
Improving your time management at work allows you to enhance your performance and achieve your desired goals with less effort and more effective strategies. However, failing to manage time or poor time management skills at work can result in missing deadlines and appointments, procrastination and lack of focus, lack of professionalism, work and life imbalance, unwanted stress, poor professional reputation, financial penalties, etc.
Benefits of time management in a workplace
Many advantages come along with proper management of time. Here are some profits that you achieve by managing your time in your workplace:
1. Deliver work on time
Allocating a finite period to tasks helps you complete them on time. It also helps you to manage your workload most effectively. When you have time-boxed tasks, your brain gets rewired to follow the structure and accomplish those activities within the desired time frame.
2. Provide a better quality of work
As a dedicated employee, you are expected to provide work of certain quality and standards. Prioritization helps you focus on important tasks by keeping them in the highest priority which enables you to work on them with full attention and focus.
3. More productivity and efficiency
It is no secret that effective time management skills make you more productive and efficient as a working professional. These skills help you finish tasks as early as possible without compromising the quality of work.
4. Much less procrastination
The meaning of time management is not just about doing more in less time but also reducing the urge to delay and procrastinate over important tasks. Applying good time management tricks enable you as a founder, leader, or employee to work smarter rather than harder.
5. Less stress and anxiety
There are times when employees feel overwhelmed due to too much work on their plates. Excessive stress and hypertension can lead to heart diseases, depression, obesity, and more. Knowing what to do can reduce unnecessary stress and tensions in your life.
6. Improved quality of life
Effective time management skills don’t just benefit your professional life but can also improve your life outside of the office. If you keep things under control on the professional front, you get more time to focus on your personal life and relationships.
7. More opportunities and career growth
Being punctual with your work will not only increase your effectiveness but will also help you earn a good reputation at work. When managers and seniors know that you always complete your tasks on time, it could lead the way for more promotional opportunities at work.
8. More time for leisure and recreation
With good time management, you get more free time in your day to do the leisure and recreational activities that make you happy. Ultimately this helps you to create the perfect balance by working smart all day and having a reward of your choice in return.
Types of time management skills
Time management involves both managing your own time and the time of the others. It means working efficiently, and employers in every industry look for staff that can make optimal use of the time available to them on the job. Saving time saves the organization money and increases revenue. Here are some types of time management skills.
1. Prioritizing
It might be impossible to do every single minute task expected of you. You also might want to do everything all at once. But you must prioritize so that you can complete the most important tasks in an order that makes sense. When assigning priority, consider such factors as when each task needs to be done, how long it might take, how important it might be to others in the organization, what could happen if a task is not done, and whether any task might be interrupted by bottlenecks in the process.
2. Scheduling
Scheduling is important because some tasks have to be done at specific times. Most have specific times of the day when they are more or less productive as a result of energy levels and demands of the day. Schedules can be a good way to avoid procrastination, too.
3. Task management
To-do lists (properly prioritized and integrated with your schedule) are a great way to avoid forgetting something important. They are also a great way to avoid spending all day thinking about everything you have to do.
Split all the necessary tasks up into a list for each day, and you won’t have to worry about all of it all at once. Just take your tasks one day at a time.
4. Workload management
Pacing your work, even though it may seem an odd thing to call a skill, is an important time management concept. Although working long hours or skipping breaks can sometimes improve productivity in the short term, your exhaustion later will ensure that your overall productivity drops. Except for rare emergencies, it is important to resist the temptation to overwork. Include necessary breaks, and a sensible quitting time, in your schedule.
5. Delegation
Depending on what type of work you do, you may be able to delegate some tasks. Knowing what and when to delegate is an important skill. Some people resist delegating, either because they want to maintain control or because they want to save money by not hiring assistants. Both approaches ultimately hurt productivity and raise costs.
Remember, however, that if you practice time management diligently and still can’t get everything done, you may be trying to do too much. It is better to succeed at a few tasks than to attempt and fail at many.
7 steps for better time management at work
Learning time management is not so hard. Luckily, anyone can learn this art with a little practice and learning. So here are a few steps that tell you how to become a time management expert:
1. Plan
Planning plays an important role in time management as both go hand-in-hand with each other. You can make the most of your time only when it is thoroughly planned. In planning, you don’t necessarily have to follow a strict routine, instead, you can make smarter decisions by knowing the right time to do a task or an activity.
2. Prioritize
Prioritizing your daily tasks is the key to successful time management. It helps you realize that not everything you do is important. It is important to focus on your priorities to achieve success at work. Figure out the most important tasks and the urgent ones.
3. Don’t multitask
Multitasking is one of the biggest time-wasting activities. Instead of accomplishing too many things, you end up achieving nothing out of them.
The best way to utilize your time is to take one thing at a time and accomplish it before jumping to the next thing. Make a list of tasks that need to be accomplished in terms of their priority.
4. Cut off distractions
In our everyday life, distractions cost us many valuable hours in a day. To not let these distractions eat up your time, it’s better to cut them off completely from your schedule. Take a moment to learn about the things that distract you.
5. Schedule your break time
Taking regular breaks while working is an effective way to stay productive all day. But its effectiveness is subject to management risk, especially when you start taking too many breaks. You can’t power through a big project or task in one go, you need a break. What’s even better is having a well-scheduled break time. Do whatever helps you to relax and get back to work with energy later – but don’t take more than 10 minutes.
6. Find your most productive hours
The next time management hack is to match your highest priority work to your highest productivity hours. The basic idea here is to check in with yourself frequently to track when, where, and how you’re the most productive. So, if you have a project that involves critical decisions and complex thoughts, the best-case scenario is to manage it in your “golden hours”.
7. Accept your limitations
Even with 110% effort, there will be occasions where you simply cannot get things done within the specified time frame. This is the point where you accept that there are limits to how productively and efficiently you can manage your time. Don’t just assume that you can get everything done that you wanted in any given time frame. Remember, doing this will only make it harder to manage your time effectively.
In conclusion, effective time management skills can have a positive impact on your work and life in general. When you learn to take control of your time daily, you improve your ability to get things done, make better decisions, and most importantly, gain ultimate control of your key priorities.