Do the Right Things in Less Time With these Time Management Skills

In order to advance in your career, successfully complete your projects and receive a promotion or salary increase, you must learn to consistently focus on the activities that will bring the most benefit to your projects and your customers. The better you are able to maintain focus and manage your time, the more you will achieve and the easier it will be for you to leave the office on time. Effective time management skills not only enable you to achieve better results at work, but also help you resist stress and lead a more fulfilling life outside of work.

The following strategies will help you do the right things in less time;

Start your day with a clear focus

The first work-related activity of your day should be to determine what you want to accomplish on that day and what you absolutely must accomplish. Be clear about this before you check your email and start answering questions and solving problems. Setting a clear focus for your day may only take five minutes, but it can save you hours of wasted time and effort.

Have a dynamic task list

Keep the tasks and activities you need to complete on a list and update it regularly throughout the day. Go through this list frequently and add new items as they appear. Make sure that your list gives you a quick overview of everything that is urgent and important, and remember to include strategic and relationship-building activities in addition to operational tasks.

Focus on activities of high value

Before you start something new, identify the activity that would have the most positive impact on your project, your team and your customer if you were involved now. Resist the temptation to clarify minor, unimportant issues first. Start with what is most important.

To help you better assess which activities you should focus on first, ask the following questions:

What does my client or my team need most from me at the moment?
What will cause the most trouble if it is not done?
What is the biggest contribution I can make at the moment?
What strategic tasks do I have to deal with today so that we can work smarter tomorrow?

Minimize interruptions

The more uninterrupted time you have during the day to work on important tasks, the more effective you will be. Identify the activities that tend to interrupt your work and find a solution. Basically, one of the most important skills in time management is not to be distracted. For example, avoid checking emails and answering the phone when you are busy with something important. Once you have interrupted your workflow, it can be difficult to restore it. Instead, discipline yourself to work single-mindedly on a task until it is completed.

Stop hesitating

If you have difficulty staying focused or tend to hesitate, it may be beneficial for you to impose an external obligation (deadline) on yourself. For example, plan a meeting in two days where you present your work and by what time your actions must be completed. It is also very effective to complete the most unpleasant tasks early in the day and treat yourself to small rewards when you have completed them.

Limit multi-tasking

Many of us do several tasks at the same time and believe that we are effective at it, but there are signs that we are not effective at focusing on more than one thing at a time. To limit multi-tasking, try these tips: Plan your day in blocks and take time for meetings, callbacks, and detailed planning and analysis at your desk. Whenever you are faced with multitasking, stop and sit still for a minute.

Review your day

Spend 5-10 minutes each day going through your to-do list before you leave the office. Pat yourself on the shoulder when you have achieved what you wanted. If you feel that the efforts of your day were not enough, decide what you will do differently tomorrow to achieve what you need to achieve. Leave the office in a good mood and determined to pick up the thread the next day.

When you tackle these important time management skills together, your days and projects will run much smoother!