Do you often have to sit beyond 9 to 5 working hours? Do you end up missing deadlines every week? Do you find it difficult to manage work-life? If you can easily relate to these questions, it simply means you are unable to manage your time. Managing time can be simple to ensure better time management to achieve more for more productivity.
Time management will make or break your career. It is the recipe for success. Luckily, there are time management strategies at work that you can learn and apply to improve productivity.
Table of Contents
- Here are a few time management tips for your career:
- 1. Use time management tools
- 2. Learn to say “no”
- 3. Focus on your highest value activities
- 4. Sleep at least 7-8 hours
- 5. Defining your purpose
- 6. Find out where you’re wasting time
- 7. Keep your energy up through naps
- 8. Set a fixed powerful goal
- 9. Procrastination is the enemy of productivity
- 10. Follow a healthy diet to retain focus
- 11. Stop multitasking
- 12. Find your productivity zone
Here are a few time management tips for your career:
1. Use time management tools
If you are constantly missing on your deadlines with a bad track on your time, using a dedicated time management tool should be a must step. A time management tool will manage your time through a time tracking software and will plan for you how you spend your time in various activities. It will let you schedule events easily so you can get more done, making your time management easier.
Effortlessly manage your tasks, teams and clients from one place. Start using ProofHub!
2. Learn to say “no”
Every time you say yes to something that is unimportant, you say no to something that is important. – Robin Sharma
Learning how to say “no” nicely is a powerful skill that is important to set boundaries for yourself. By saying yes often to everything that comes to you will make it difficult for you to make a lot of time commitments. You will have to juggle various pages and managing time will be a challenge. It is probably good to take up challenges for your short-term career, but it becomes a curse when you fail to manage them.
So, at some point, you will have to learn to say no for your time management. Know your goals, know your priority and over the coming months, you will feel you have taken the best step for yourself. Say yes when you know you have time for it and it will not drain your productivity.
3. Focus on your highest value activities
Look at the goals you have for the week. Probably, not all the goals you have will be of high value. So, make sure the first five activities you pick for the day are of high value. Focus on less stuff and see how smoothly the needle moves. When you spend your quality time on a set of high-value activities you will better manage your time and be more productive. Time management starts from the minute you wake up and it depends exactly on how you focus on accomplishing your priority tasks.
4. Sleep at least 7-8 hours
The science of sleep says that a healthy amount of sleep for the average adult is around 7-8 hours each night. And there is no point in sacrificing this minimum amount of sleep for achieving your goals. It will not do any good to you. When you sleep for 7-8 hours your body and mind will function optimally. Tired people tend to usually procrastinate more and you know procrastination is a foe to time management.
5. Defining your purpose
You may have a lot of goals; some of them of your own and some set under the influence of other. Whether you have goals or you have none, having a purpose is important. One effective step to time management is having an eye on the prize. The more clear you are, the more fulfilling life you will live.
Ignoring purpose is becoming quite common which makes it difficult the accomplishment of your goals. So, start with a purpose by giving a bit of deep thought about what actually you want to unfold in the future. Once you define your purpose, this will prepare you for the roadmap to success and time management.
6. Find out where you’re wasting time
Many of us are engaged in pointless activities that just eat up our time and frustrate us to burnout. You might be wasting a lot of your time without even realizing what you are doing in things like web browsing, reading email, texting, having the same updates again and again or making personal calls. If you think you are doing things that waste your time, keep a track of your time on a time tracking software. Track all your daily activities so you have a clear picture of your time on various activities.
7. Keep your energy up through naps
We all have a Circadian rhythm, a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. A short afternoon nap can make you more alert, perform better, reduces stress and boost cognitive performance. Companies like Google, Uber, and Zappos have dedicated nap spaces for their employees to get an energy boost whenever they need it. Maintain your naptime schedule and regain back the energy to work.
8. Set a fixed powerful goal
Before you start managing your time, do you know what are your goals? Only when your learn the importance of your goals and you fix them, you will be better able to manage your time to achieve those goals. Make that big picture of your fixed powerful goal that will create a huge impact on you and with time you will learn to allocate time judiciously.
9. Procrastination is the enemy of productivity
Procrastination is an enemy because it diverts us from our goals. Often we lose our battle because of procrastination. If you want to become perfect at what you do by being good at time management, start doing things right now rather than procrastinating it. The day will never come. So, combat procrastination and make the most of the day.
10. Follow a healthy diet to retain focus
At times we have problems staying with our plan because we lose our energy and focus on maintaining track of things. You can also notice that whenever you have a heavy meal like fatty food you get drowsy and think slower. You simply lose the motivation to stay focused on your long-term and short-term goals. Your eating habits have a huge impact on your productivity. A study published in Population Health Management shows that you risk to losing 66% of your productivity if you eat unhealthy food. Consume brain foods blueberries, avocado, green tea, leafy green vegetables, and nuts and consume a lot of water. You will regain your energy level and stay focused. Different foods are processed at different rates by your body, so consuming vegetables and fruits helps your body produce dopamine.
11. Stop multitasking
Our brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time and when you combine it with multiple things it will surely give you poor results. You will end up wasting much of your time and resulting in zero productivity. When you multitask you are making your brain rapidly switch from one task to another which negatively impacts your efficiency. When you try to complete two or more tasks at once it takes longer to complete each task compared to when you focus on them individually.
12. Find your productivity zone
Find the time of the day when you are most active. Some people are most active in the morning while some are after lunch. During this time pick the important tasks and use all your energy to complete them. You will be in full momentum and save a lot of your time for other tasks. You can cut down on the time by identifying when you work best. You can boost your productivity even more during this focused work time.
If you are particularly serious about achieving your goals, improve your time management abilities with these tips and adopt the superpower of time management.
