Manage your time more effectively

Top tips to help you Manage your Time more effectively

1.  Set yourself goals. You need to know what you are working towards in order to identify which tasks are most important.
2. Set aside time for planning, and thinking about what your goals are and how you might achieve them. This might not feel or look like important work when you have a lot to do, but spending time planning lets you know that when you do take action, what you are doing will contribute to your goals.
3.  Prioritise your work. Identify the most important tasks you have to do and focus on them. In this way you can ensure that you use your time to work towards your goals. It feels important to note at this point that these important tasks may not be large projects. They could be seemingly minor tasks that must be done on an ongoing basis every day.
4. Break up your work. You can only focus on a certain task for so long before you start to get fatigued and your work will suffer. Generally, fatigue starts to set in after about 60-90 minutes. For this reason, you should only work on each task for a certain amount of time before taking a break from it.
5. Allocate specific times for dealing with emails. This way, you can devote your attention to your work without being interrupted every time something comes into your inbox. Also, this should mean that you actually have time to devote to responding to your correspondence, rather than rushing it so you can get back to something else.
6. Draw up a to-do list. This is an important part of managing and prioritising your work. How are you to decide which are the most important tasks unless you know what else is competing for your time. It also creates a feeling of satisfaction every time you tick something off the list.
7. Break up large projects into smaller component steps. A single large task can be extremely intimidating, but by breaking it up into smaller steps you make it manageable.
8. Organise your systems. If you know where documents or files are, you won’t need to waste time searching for them.
9. Identify when you have the most energy. This will often be in the morning, though for some people it could be in the evening. This will be when you are most productive, and should be when you do your most important tasks.
10. Make time for yourself. I realise that this might seem hard, but even if you feel overburdened with work, make sure that you have time in the day to do something you find fun or relaxing. It is important to include time to recharge your batteries. This can be a way of rewarding yourself for a productive day