A universally known and oft-repeated adage states that “time is money.” It’s not without reason. One of the secrets to business success in today’s business environment is speed and agility, whether in decision making, solving problems (or even anticipating them) or prospecting for new opportunities. There is no doubt that good time management is crucial for agility to become a reality in management and knowing how to manage time properly can be identified in fact as one of the most important elements for success in the current era.
Measuring the time spent in each action performed and having tasks properly organized is essential to meet previously defined deadlines and consequently save resources. But what exactly is time management? n order to answer this question, first of all, it is necessary to have the notion that various commitments compete with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether they are related to work, education , family , health or other commitments that populate anyone’s agenda. In this way, attention must be paid to the various challenges related to commuting, communication failures , long service lines or scheduling conflicts and knowing how to prioritize, and work within a predetermined time frame, reacting to unforeseen circumstances without compromising work delivery deadlines is part of what you can call time management. In other words, time management is a set of activities and techniques used to optimize the execution of tasks, to guarantee productivity and maintain or increase the efficiency of the actions needed to be carried out.
How can you ensure that time is well managed?
Productivity is one of the barometers to measure how time is spent and whether it is well managed or not. To people who manage to comply with tasks efficiently and be recognized in the environment in which they work they must demonstrate results within the stipulated timeframe . The question is: how can they do it? There are time management techniques, which go through planning, organization and discipline strategies, while there are tools that ensure that this management is well executed . Learn more about these techniques below. Learn more about these techniques below.
Tips for better time management
As we saw earlier, good time management goes through a routine of organization, planning and a good application of discipline, with individualized steps that must be taken, whose application results in a significant improvement in the efficient performance of tasks:
Find out where you spend your time
A very useful tip is to track the actions that really spend or take up your time, to verify that you are allocating the time you owe to the right tasks. It is also necessary to be fully aware of the habits that prevent you from applying yourself 100% to the goals you set out to achieve, such as, for example, keeping up with social networks, shopping or playing games on the internet. Knowing how much time can be spent on each task and having an idea of the period it will take to carry out each activity is a necessary basis to prepare a week or even a day of work. In the digital environment in which we operate today, an interesting tip to help you manage time is to block distractions , namely alerts or notifications from applications such as personal emails, WhatsApp , Twitter , among other digital channels for entertainment or that have nothing to do with the professional field. One option may be to establish a specific time to check these notifications, especially outside working hours.
Make a daily schedule of activities
This trick is necessary to check if you are carrying out the activities you intend to carry out during the day. Instead of counting the total eight hours you have, you can subdivide the hours depending on the tasks and write down every time each of them is completed. This tip can also help you grouping tasks according to which of them they take the most time or those which spend the least amount of time. he important thing is to create realistic schedules so that you do not tgenerate overly optimistic delivery estimates.
Prioritize tasks
Always try to group tasks according to importance and urgency, in order to understand which ones should be done immediately, which ones can be scheduled for later and which ones can be delegated to other people or even excluded.
Start with the hardest task
Although each person can react differently to each request or task to be fulfilled, starting with the most difficult action is usually convenient because it allows the peak of energies and focus to be directed towards that task,also helping to make up for lost time if some distraction or inconvenience during the work routine arises. Therefore, the recommendation is to take on the most demanding or the most important task right away and only after finishing it, move on to the less complicated or less urgent tasks.
Set reasonable deadlines
It is important to ensure that the time allocated to each activity is well calculated, in order to avoid that the work expands too much just to fill the allocated time or that it ends before being able to finish with the task. Placing larger or smaller windows can help you to have better control and management over the allocated time and it will be up to you to understand which method works best for you.
Avoid multi-tasking
Most people end up multi-tasking, thinking that this will help them work more smoothly and maximize productivity. However, contrary to popular belief, multitasking can harm your mental health and add stress to your daily life, in addition to hurting your productivity.
Have items organized
Keeping your desk clean, cataloging your computer files, creating a system that allows you to quickly and easily find items, scheduling events or tasks can help you stick to your schedule more efficiently and avoid worrying unnecessarily.
MAIN TIME MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Using a time management tool can help you identify and eliminate tasks and activities that are not crucial to the progress of your projects . From to-do lists and calendar reminders, to shopping lists and meetings, thanks to time management apps, you can easily keep track of everything and achieve goals faster and, above all, be in control of your time Currently , there are m several time and project management tools , as well as applications to organize tasks. Some of the most used time management tools are: Trello , Runrun.it, Asana , Todoist , Pipefy , Wunderlist , Rescuetime , Be Focused , among others. The use of these tools allows the user to estimate the average time of the tasks that are carried out , as well as the sharing your schedule with other people or with the team involved in these activities, allowing you to monitor the progress of projects .
In short, having the various time management techniques and tools very well mastered allows any professional to progress in their career, as well as improving in their quality of life and allowing them to increase their performance and productivity in their work. By ensuring that the activities are previously organized , and that there is a better definition of priority actions , gaining space so that, if any of them does not work out or is not fulfilled within the foreseen period, it is possible to adjust the agenda and not miss any objective or set deadline .
