In fact, the problem of lack of time is widespread, and many people face it even on a daily basis. However, there is a good deal of ways to overcome it, and here we offer some tips to improve your time management.
Find out your patterns of productivity
Track your daily activities and log your time spent on them. By doing so, you will not only figure out how much time you need for a particular kind of assignment but also how much of it is consumed by fruitless activities throughout the day. Such a practice will also help get to know when you are the most productive to focus on tough tasks.
Organize a daily to-do list
Before getting down to business, create a schedule for your every day and stick to it. It will let you stay concentrated and subsequent and avoid jumping between different tasks while trying to complete them. You can also save more time by doing some things ahead of the plan.
Determine the most prioritized activities
Whilst making your plan for a certain period, pay more attention to the essentials and eliminate the job that shouldn’t be performed in the first place. To make this process easier, you can use the Eisenhower matrix developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States. He dived all activities into four groups: Important and urgent tasks, which must be completed as soon as possible.
Important but not urgent tasks, which may be scheduled but must be finished anyway.
Urgent but not important tasks, which take your time but don’t contribute to your output. They should be delegated if possible or minimized.
Not urgent and not important tasks, which are considered distractions and ought to be postponed or removed.
Set your deadlines
Try to estimate how much time you will need to complete a particular task and outline your time limits. To make it more comfortable, you can use such time management techniques as the Pomodoro Technique or timeboxing. The first one offers you to break up your work time into 25-minute intervals with five-minute breaks between them and a more extended break after four such intervals. When using timeboxing, you can designate the amount of time, a timebox, for each piece of work on your own.
Resist multitasking
“To do two things at once is to do neither.” — Publius Syrus
This practice may seem quite effective at first glance. However, when managing several assignments at a time, the odds are you won’t be able to deal with all of them. You can lose your concentration, get distracted or irritated, and even become disappointed in your own abilities, and, ultimately, you are likely to quit. To sidestep this, try to focus on finishing tasks step by step instead of jumping back and forth.
Do not get overwhelmed
Keep in mind to give your brain some minutes to recharge. It will help you not only relieve the tension and unwind but also come back to your work with a new perspective and enhance your functionality.
Allow yourself to refuse
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” — Warren Buffett
To avoid wasting your precious time on futile activities, try to become comfortable with saying “no”. If you feel the need to decline some requests for the sake of your other matters with a higher priority, do not hesitate to do that guilt-free.
Get rid of distractions
Scrolling social media, web browsing, and instant text messaging takes much more time than we think. To do away with this issue, it is recommended that you turn off all the private messaging notifications and close all the unneeded tabs during your work time. Breaks will be more suitable for these activities.
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