Tip of the Week: How To Get Better at Managing Your Time

Countless business professionals all over the world are finding that they don’t have enough time in their work day to handle all of their responsibilities. The truth of the matter is that this is hardly something that’s anyone’s fault. If anything, it’s the poor time management skills that come from bad practices in the office. Today's tip is dedicated to how you can keep these tendencies to waste time in check.

Prioritize Tasks
Sometimes it’s tricky to figure out what you need to work on next. While it might seem like it makes sense to just pick up any new task to replace the old one, there might be too many options available. Take a moment to look at your day and organize tasks in order of importance. See how many tasks you can get done with minimal time waste. If you have a process in mind, you’ll be able to focus on the task at hand rather than the decision of which task to complete.

To put together this order, you need to establish the urgency of these tasks compared to the others. Deadlines can aid in this, but if other people in your organization need the task done in order to do their jobs, you can also use that. It also helps to think about the impact that this could have on future productivity. You can use a communication and collaboration solutions to help determine who in your business needs access to whatever it is you’re working on.

Limit How Much Time is Spent on Monotonous Tasks
Sometimes your daily tasks might take up a little more time than necessary. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just subconsciously spend less time on them? After all, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole and spend too much time on a simple process. Some users might even mistake email for a solution that is supposed to convey urgency, which it most certainly is not. If users are under this impression, their focus could shift and harm productivity.

You can combat these urges to check email and perform other routine tasks constantly by doing them only during concrete periods of time that you have scheduled into your workday. A business management solution can make this possible. Once you’ve taken care of the task during that time, then leave it be until the next time it’s scheduled to be handled. After all, if there is an important email in your inbox, chances are someone will get ahold of it regardless.

Delegation and Outsourcing
Sometimes it can be difficult to give tasks to other people, particularly if you’ve grown attached to the work done on it, or you just want to make sure that it gets done right. Unfortunately, this can be holding you back from getting the most out of your workday. Instead, try giving people who you have hired the tasks that you don’t have time for. While delegation can be difficult to accept at first, it’s for the better. If you feel you can’t trust those around you to get the work done, or they simply don’t have the skill set needed to get the task done, then outsourcing is a perfectly viable option.

SCW can help you make these practices into an everyday occurrence for your business. To learn more, reach out to us at (509) 534-1530.