Take care of your to-do list with our top tips for time management
Typing and Tasks Limited
Forever feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day? Effective time management can be the difference between a productivity-filled and a procrastination-filled day. Take a look below at our suggestions for combatting your time management woes.
LESSON ONE: Ditch the multi-tasking.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, multi-tasking is officially defined as “a person's ability to do more than one thing at a time”.
Multi-tasking is often seen as a strength and in many situations it is.
However, research has also suggested that “engaging in multiple tasks may diminish performance by up to 40%” and can impair cognitive processes which actually hinders productivity.
In order to effectively manage your time, focus on one task at a time and give it your full attention.
LESSON TWO: Unplug the distractions In a world of instant contactless payments, relentless phone notifications and a sub-10 minute McDonalds breakfast delivery right to your front door – it’s easier than ever to become distracted.
In order to effectively manage your time, clear away as many distractions as possible. STOP scrolling through LinkedIn, STOP procrastinating and start actioning.
LESSON THREE: Write a to-do list When you’re busy, it can be really easy to forget all of the things you need to achieve in any given day.
Productivity can mask a multitude of sins, including the fact you’re incredibly busy doing a fat-load of nothing.
Writing a list of everything you need to do is the single most efficient way to improve your time management skills.
Writing it the evening before will help you to ‘unload’ everything that is outstanding and also ensures you embrace the day knowing exactly what you need to achieve. It also helps to reduce the amount of multi-tasking you are attempting (see lesson one).
LESSON FOUR: Delegate what you can There are things in our working life that we are naturally good at and other things, that definitely don’t play to our strengths.
Those tasks are the ones you should seek to delegate.
If you are lucky enough to have a team to support you, those tasks that take you twice as long as they should and drain you of the will-to-live should be the first to go on the ‘delegation pile’.
If you are not fortunate enough to have a team to delegate to but you ARE able to outsource; do it. Set aside a little budget each month for those things you really cannot do.
If you work for yourself, maybe it’s your bookkeeping or your social media.
If you work as part of a team, maybe it’s planning the company Christmas party or team getaway.
Whatever it is, if it’s not something that plays to your strengths leave it to someone who can do it better.
If you’re still struggling to manage all of your conflicting priorities and would like to see if the support of a Virtual Assistant could help, contact us at hello@typingandtasks.com or call us on 0121 517 0239.
We take care of the distractions, so you don’t have to.