"Rome wasn't built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour." - John Heywood.
Whether you're the CEO of a major company, a gig economy worker or a housewife/husband, we're all given the same amount of hours in a day. And yet, some of us manage those hours better than others. Why that happens may not be for the reasons you think.
Often it's not due to a lack of brilliance or hard work. People who have plenty of both can still struggle to make the most out of 24 hours in a day.
The main obstacle is poor "prioritization".
Knowing how to implement that into your daily time management is what will set you apart from the rest in terms of productivity and much needed peace of mind.
The first thing you need to understand about daily time management is the importance of sorting out what's relevant from what's urgent. Everything in your day demands your attention or else it wouldn't be there, but some things deserve priority over others.
For example, if you're due to make a big presentation in the next few days that could affect your career, spend more hours in your day revising your material and out your other assignments aside temporarily. These things still need to get done, but they can't be occupying your mind right now. Time management is about knowing what not to do as much as what to do.
Why?
Because you do not in fact have 24 hours a day to spare. You have 8-12 working hours and according to recent research, you are likely only to be productive during three of those hours while you drone on for the rest.
That doesn't leave you with a very wide window of time to tackle everything in a day without cutting into precious rest and recreation time, which is every bit as important for your productivity. Making the most out of that limited timeline requires a well-thought out process.
Here are some useful principles.
This should go without saying, but it bears repeating; You need to plan out your day. More than just having a to-do list, you need to heavily scrutinize what goes in that list.
Make full use of apps like Trello to create a well-organized schedule and rank your priorities well. Remember, it's not about how fast or hard you work, but about how well you're able to discern what the important work is.
A lack of priorities in a daily schedule will inevitably lead to distractions as your mind shifts attention away from what you're currently doing to what you think you should be doing. Nothing is more certain to lead to wasted hours.
Organize your schedule around the resolution of your most important tasks and you'll find yourself far more productive in the hours you have left in the day.
Aside from the conventional advice about not wasting your time scrolling aimlessly through social media while you're on the clock, it should also be said that distractions at work don't just come from recreational sources. Often they can be work-related, but not relevant in your daily schedule.
This may seem counterintuitive, but your email is one of them. It poses the same risk to your daily schedule as social media does because it provides a feed of information that could throw off your flow. Of course, you can't go without checking your inbox at the start of the day, but let it determine your day unless it's an absolute emergency.
Make use of an auto-responder for the time being and put aside an hour for replying at your earliest convenience.
Aside from emails, there are also your colleagues.
Don't get us wrong. Team interaction, especially if you're a manager, is important for team morale. However, friendly chats have a habit of becoming hour-long conversations, which in turn have a habit of becoming a daily occurrence if you get too chummy.
Without coming off as rude or dismissive, politely postpone that offer to chat or be firm on the time limit. Nobody's going to respect your time if you don't.
Doing several things at the same time prevents you from concentrating on any single task efficiently.
In a previous piece, we wrote on the dangers of "attention residue" in multitasking. A phenomenon where one can't focus on the task at hand because the mind is still preoccupied with trying to remember and resolve details of the previous task. The very essence of a "scattered brain".
Sometimes you may have no choice but to multitask, but understand that doing it long-term will most certainly derail your time management. Doing several things at once doesn't mean you'll do any of them well.
Managing the available hours you have in a day is not about going above and beyond your means to become the most insanely productive person alive. Just the opposite.
It's about 'slowing down'. It's about setting achievable goals on a daily basis that you can consistently live up to and carry through the following day as it ultimately culminates into something incredible. Once you get comfortable in the right routine, completing your tasks become smooth sailing and you'll no longer find yourself swamped at work confused over where to even begin with your day.
The key lies in forgetting about the need to get everything done in a day and focusing on what's important in a day. Invest your energy organizing around just that and you will always have time to spare.
Thank you for reading our piece. We hope it was useful for you. If you're interested in upskilling yourself or your team, click on any of the recommended courses below for more information.
This course gives participants the time management...
Coping with Anger Management? Join this training t...
This 2 day intensive Time Management activity-base...
