Time
Management at Work
How to
reduce your work overload
Overworked and
overwhelmed and maybe under paid. Do you sometimes feel one or all of these
at your work? Time Management at Work is becoming more critical everyday. It
seems people are expected to do more, get better results, but have less
resources and budgets. And somehow we are meant to have some work-life balance.
We have found most people can significantly improve their time management at
work. The same core principles apply to getting control of time regardless of
whether you are at work or for life in general (check out our Time Management
Skills Page for the 4 core skills). There are though some very specific aspects
to time management at work that can make your life less overwhelming and more
fulfilling.
There are many aspects to getting control of time at work. We will start here
with five key strategies that have had the biggest impact for our clients. These
are:
-
Agree on and document
with your manager your performance measures and targets
-
Decide what key
activities will get you to these targets and do them
-
Say no to tasks that
have little impact on your targets
-
Reduce the time taken
by interruptions
-
Get really clear
about what is the next action
There are many more
strategies that will improve your time management at work and we will be writing
about these in the future. If you are in sales or if you manage people come back
soon to see our suggestions for you.
Let's look at strategy
number 2 in more detail.
2. Decide what key
activities will get you to these targets and do them
The second strategy for improving your time management at work flow from the
first.
As soon as you are clear about what you will be measured on, then you need to
know what activities will enable you to reach your targets. Look at your action
lists -- if you don't have one then write down everything that you think you
should do at work and all the things you ahve done in the last week. Add an
other tasks that you do on a monthly or as it comes up basis.
Review this list. Decide which of these takes is directly related to achieving
your targets. Decide which ones are indirectly related and give them a strength
rating out of 10 (where 10 means this task has a high impact on you achieving
your targets, and 1 is a very low impact). Decide which tasks do not help you
reach your targets at all - maybe there are even some that make it harder for
you to reach your targets.
Now, everyday make sure that you spend the majority of your day on the tasks
that help you achieve your targets. I suggest you highlight them in your system
(if you don't have a system check out our time management systems page, the link
is on the left of this page).
Yes, it is that simple. Now I didn't say it was easy -- some people find it
difficult to stay on task. On the other hand many people have told us that this
strategy for improving time management at work has made a massive difference
because all of a sudden it is really clear them what they need to focus on and
do. And because it is so clear it is much easier to stay focused on the tasks
and get them done.
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