Whether you are an employer looking to improve the efficiency of your employees, or an employee who is in need of getting more done in less time, everyone can benefit from learning a few time management techniques. This is especially relevant in today’s society where there is an abundance of distractions, ranging from social media notifications, text messages, emails, and direct messages. Get ready to make the most of your time with these tips:
- Set a Timer
If your struggle with time comes from your inability to focus for a certain period of time or from being easily distracted by things around you, set a timer for 50 minutes. For this time, you are committing to only focusing on your work, with the reward at the end of getting a 10 minute break! When the timer goes off, set it again for 10 minutes and give in to any distractions you had, take a break, walk around, and then re-commit again to your next 50 minute segment. - Use Your Screen Tools
If you are working on creating your PERM advertising to post in the Bay Area, you may be getting particularly frustrated or bored by the task. Being online, you may find yourself drifting over to open a new tab, ending up on Facebook, a news site, your email, or looking at cute cat videos. Unfortunately, none of this is good for your time, and you can help yourself out by maximizing your screen and only having one screen visible on your computer at a time. If you are working in a browser, open only one tab, filling the screen with that page and resisting the need to skip over to the other tabs that contain unnecessary distractions. - Eat a Frog for Breakfast
You may be familiar with this term, which essentially encourages you to do the hardest thing first and avoid procrastinating it until later! When we are faced with a large to do list, our tendency is to push the hardest thing, or the thing that we like the least to the bottom of the list and tackle the easy tasks that we like to do first. While it can seem productive to tick all these off the list, ultimately, the big, hard looming task is still left, and now you are even more tired, and with less mental and cognitive capacity than you had when you started. Skip all of that and start your day with your hardest task: you’ll get it done and not have to deal with it later and that will give you a much needed boost for the rest of your day.
While there are many ways to improve your time management skills, these are just a few examples and a great place to start.
