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Do you find yourself saying “I really don’t have time for this” most of the time during the day? It’s quite natural to be stressed out when things to do are more than you have time to do. With the right time management and appropriate tools, you can save time at work and get rid of time wastage.
What is The Importance of Time Management?
As a result of a meta-analysis study on time management in Canada, the following result was obtained:
“Interestingly, we found that time management impacts wellbeing—and in particular life satisfaction—to a greater extent than performance. That means time management may be primarily a wellbeing enhancer, rather than a performance booster.”
Time management is not only increasing the productivity of the employees or makes profit, but also increases the individual life well-being of the employees.
What is Proper Time Management?
Time management is the art of getting things done on time and close to perfection, using less time for more work, and maintaining a work-life balance. An effective time management also allows you to earn profits by protecting your employees and increasing their productivity and satisfaction levels.
Teamwork is required to make proper time management for the organization. First of all, the leader should be a good observer and analyze the team members. Workload distribution should be done in an efficient way. Employees, on the other hand, should see the time they have by planning their to-do lists according to the degree of importance and the deadline, and act accordingly.
Best Ways to Save Time at Work
Time must be used wisely as there is no stop button. Let’s see what we can do to improve our time management together.
1.Make a To Do List
When it comes to time management, the first thing that comes to mind is to prepare a To-Do list. Although it may seem cliché, it helps you plan a lot. Identifying daily or weekly To-Do’s, order of importance, and deadlines gives you a handy map for your path.
Regardless of what industry, where and how you work, you can easily use the To-Do list. The tool you use to create an effective to-do list – it can be an organizer or a digital planner like PeerBie – needs to be quick, easy to edit and personalize.
Be careful, sometimes we add extra and unnecessary tasks to our lists with the urge of perfectionism. When you’re done with your to-do list, review your list and get rid of the task mess.
2.Prioritize Tasks
After the To-Do list is prepared, the priorities of the tasks should be determined. Organizing tasks according to urgency and deadlines gives you an idea of which tasks to focus your time and energy on first. It also saves you from the stress that can arise in the absence of these high-urgency tasks, or the overwhelming feeling of a task that’s close to a deadline but still unfinished.
You can use the Eisenhower Matrix or your own personalized matrices to prioritize your tasks. You can also use digital planners such as PeerBie, which also have features such as task prioritization and deadline setting.
3.Time Blocking
The task tends to expand by the set deadline. This means that if you give too much time to a task that needs to be done, you will spend too much time on that task. If you limit the work to time, you will finish it faster.
You have set your To-Do list, you have prioritized your tasks, now it is time to limit the tasks to time. Estimate how long the task will take to complete on your individual tasks and note it down.
If you have to do teamwork or if you have a meeting, let your teammates know where the meeting will be, when it will start and when it will end. This saves time for you and your teammates.
4.One Task at a Time
It is a big mistake to try to do more than one job at the same time and thus hope to complete them both completely and on time. The human brain is not a computer. If you want to do a job as it should be, focus on only one job at a time. This will both calm the rush in your head, and you will have done your job properly.
5.Manage Distractions
If the given task is a task that we do not want to do, we can do our best to postpone it. We can resort to procrastination tactics such as chatting with friends, having another coffee, checking social media. So, we have to eat the frog first and stay away from any distractions as much as possible.
6.Get Help
If the task does not match your competency or if you are unable to complete the task that day, there is no point in pushing it further. As you push, you will lose time and get cold from all work. Get help! Working with a teammate helps get the job done early and feels better. If that doesn’t work either, you can talk to your leader and request that the job be assigned to someone else.
7.Take Breaks
The longer a person’s focusing time, the lower the focusing intensity. The attention duration of the human brain is also not unlimited. That’s why taking regular breaks will make you feel better and increase your productivity. Taking a break may seem like a waste of time in the short run, but in the long run – day, month, year – it is vital for human health and work efficiency.
8.Use Right Tools
There are many tools that can be used for Time Management. The most traditional is the agenda and the most up to date is the digital planners. Which one is better varies from person to person? If deadlines and notes are important, using a digital planner may be more beneficial for you, you can find what you are looking for without getting lost between the pages. If you want to know how much time you spend on what and keep data of collaboration such as teamwork, it is definitely better to use a digital planner such as PeerBie.
9.Ending the Day with Tomorrow’s Plan
At the end of the day, if there are unfinished works in that day or what tasks need to be done tomorrow, making a note will ensure that you are not idle when you come to work the next day. Making a note of leftovers or things to remember from the day will give you a rough outline of what to do the next day. You can easily create a roadmap in your mind about what you will do when you start work the next day.
10.Track Your Time
Identifying which tasks you finish before you set which tasks while you spend more time completing them will make your job easier the next time you plan. It also allows you to self-evaluate time-based performance. If there is anything wrong with your working time, you can identify the problem and develop measures to prevent this problem from recurring.
How to Manage Your Time with Peerbie?
PeerBie is a compact business management software. It includes digital planners and tools that offer easy communication such as messaging and video conferencing, and file sharing.
PeerBie can be used comfortably for freelancers or organizations. With the digital planner feature, you can avoid wasting your time and plan for effective time management. You can also track how much time you spent on a task, and evaluate your retroactive time use with the reports given by PeerBie.
You can set personal tasks daily, weekly, monthly, prioritize these tasks according to urgency, put them on your calendar based on the deadline, and follow up your tasks by setting a reminder if necessary. If you’re an organization and using PeerBie, you can create teams with your colleagues, check your colleagues’ calendars, check their availability, and assign them tasks.
You can organize video conferences with PeerBie, which offers intra-organizational communication, or you can set Zoom meetings comfortably thanks to its integration with Zoom. While setting up these meetings, you can specify the meeting platform or the location of the meeting, the date of the meeting, the start and end time.