If you are a manager, time management is essential to your success. You need to learn how to get the most out of every hour in order to be able and willing to take on more work and greater responsibility.
After conducting research with 500 employees, Development Academy discovered the least successful time management technique is “dealing with whatever comes up”.
Therefore, to be an efficient manager, you need to have a proper time management strategy.
In this article, we will discuss 8 strategies for managing your time better so that you can be more effective and productive at work!
1. Prioritize Management Task
First of all, you need to prioritize the tasks at hand. Start by ranking them with numbers (i.e., one being most important and four least), or with letters (A for very important; B if somewhat important; C is not particularly relevant).
Generally, you need to focus more on what is more important, but sometimes you can’t ignore the less urgent jobs.
To solve this dilemma, think of your time as a pie: some slices are small and quick (one-minute tasks) while others are larger and require more time (half an hour or an hour).
You need to allocate enough time for each job at hand; if you don’t, you’ll end up dropping one or more of them.
Tackle the most important tasks first to get them off your plate and free yourself from a heavy burden.
2. Have a Clear Focus
Is very important to start your day with a clear focus on what are the task that needs to be accomplished today and what is the task you want to accomplish but you don’t have to finish them today?
You need to be clear about the things you need to accomplish today and the things that can wait.
Remember to keep your focus on what is most important at this moment, not next week or next month.
Finish any task you start by following through until it’s complete; don’t stop halfway unless absolutely necessary (to prevent forgetting about something).
You may be tempted to quickly check off multiple small items in your to-do list, but this will only add more stress to the day by making you feel overwhelmed.
Focus on what’s most important and do it well before moving on to other things that are less urgent or important.
3. Have a Daily To-Do List
As a manager you must have a lot of different tasks to handle every day, to make things easier you should have a to-do list daily.
A daily to-do list should include all the tasks you wish to accomplish in one day starting with the most important tasks and the ones that require the most attention and the time you plan on completing each task.
The benefits of having a daily to-do list are many; it helps keep track of everything you need to get done at work, prevents forgetting about something for later, and helps you prioritize your tasks so that the most important ones are completed first.
A daily to-do list is a simple but effective time management strategy managers can use in order to be more productive throughout their workday.
4. Avoid Interruptions When Possible
While you set your focused task you need to avoid any unnecessary interruptions such as phone calls, emails, social media, the internet, smartphones, or co-workers who want to chat.
Emails are one of the biggest distractions managers deal with on a daily basis. If you can avoid checking your email while trying to get certain tasks done then do so because it is very easy for an interruption to take over and turn into something much more time-consuming than what was originally planned.
Checking your email and answering phone calls might be unavoidable, therefore only check your email after completing one task before you start another.
Other distractions like social media, the internet, and irrelevant discussions need to stay away while you work.
5. Consider Outsourcing
If you have too many time-consuming tasks to handle every day, consider hiring a virtual assistant to help you out with such a task, and allow you to focus more on other important tasks.
Oftentimes tasks like data entry, email management, and PowerPoint presentations can take up most of your time while you have another important task to handle, in that case, the best way to improve your productivity and improve your time management is to outsource some of those tasks to a virtual assistant.
The benefits of outsourcing are many, therefore, if you are in doubt whether you should outsource or not, try hiring a virtual assistant on a small one-time project and see how that affects your time management and productivity.
6. Avoid Multitask
Trying to complete more than one task at a time can affect the quality of work that you produce and therefore reduce productivity.
When our brain has only one job to do, it works at full capacity which makes us more productive than when we try to complete several tasks at once.
Another reason for not trying to complete several tasks at a time is that it can be stressful and therefore affect your overall well-being negatively.
Instead, try focusing on completing one task fully before you start with the next one!
If multitasking has become part of your routine, make an effort to change this habit by dividing your tasks into several sessions and working on them one at a time.
7. Use Delegation
As a manager you have employees working under you, try to free some of your time by delegating some of the work to the appropriate employee.
Delegating work to others is not only a time management strategy that will help you save some of your own valuable time, but it’s also an excellent way to promote the growth and development of employees.
8. Break Large Tasks into Smaller Pieces
Often times when you look at the workload you have you feel exhausted even before you started.
To reduce the effect of that feeling break the large task into the smaller task, that will make them easier to handle and less intimidating which will help you finish faster than when you start a huge task with no confidence of finishing it soon.
Conclusion
Time management is an essential part of your effectiveness and productivity as a manager, without proper time management you might end up working less effectively than you can.
Use these 8 tips as your personal time management strategies, but if you want to achieve the best result you need to stay consistent with it.
Lastly, I hope you find this article helpful, if you do, feel free to share it using the social share buttons, you can also check out How to Maximize Productivity with a Virtual Assistant.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me, I will be happy to answer all your questions.
