Distractions come in all shapes and sizes, from social media to instant messages from colleagues to last minute client requests. Without proactively creating structures and routines to keep you and your team focused, you’ll find accomplishing daily tasks and meeting deadlines challenging. That’s why effective time management is more critical than ever.
Time management is the ability to plan and control how you spend your time during your work day, enabling you and your team to accomplish assigned work while avoiding procrastination and the temptation to shift to less urgent obligations. In order to manage your time effectively, you and your team need to master a number of skills: prioritization, documentation, communication, time blocking, taking regular breaks, and managing work-life balance. Read on for six tips to implement these skills to manage your (and your team’s) time more efficiently.
Six Tips For Better Time Management For You and Your Team
1. Set Clear Goals and Priorities
Encouraging your team to set specific, measurable goals for each project or task is crucial in time management. Determining the most important next step will allow your team to use their time efficiently. Using goal-setting techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix, a prioritization tool, will allow your team to differentiate between urgent but unimportant tasks, such as emails, and important but not urgent tasks, like long-term strategic planning.
2. Document Tasks
By creating a log of work completed on a project, you’ll clearly understand how you use your time daily. Tracking task completion, time frames for individual tasks, and roadblocks met along the way will enable you to see where your time is going and better plan time allocation for future projects. A number of project management tools are available to assist you and your team in completing tasks and meeting deadlines.
3. Communicate Business Goals
Communicating your business goals to your team helps them understand what tasks are essential. Fostering an atmosphere of open communication that allows your team members to share their concerns and ideas or ask for clarification creates engagement, boosts productivity, and promotes a feeling of pride in their work.
4. Use Time Blocking
Time blocking creates structure and increases productivity by creating time slots in your calendar for focused work on specific tasks. By focusing on one task at a time, you’ll gain efficiency and accomplish more in shorter periods. For added focus, turn off notifications during each time block to allow for more depth of concentration on the task at hand.
5. Schedule Regular Breaks
Working long hours without breaks may help to cross items off the to-do list in the short term, but it will likely lead to burnout in the long term. Taking short breaks throughout your work day can increase productivity and focus. Experiment with time blocks of different lengths followed by a short break. For instance, try working for 25 minutes followed by a 5-minute break or 45 minutes followed by a 15-minute break.
6. Encourage Healthy Work-life Balance
By implementing time management techniques, you and your team will increase efficiency and productivity throughout your working day. This benefits both your business and your team, because they’ll be able to leave work with a feeling of accomplishment and be able to completely rest and recharge each evening.
In conclusion, by implementing these tips and creating a time management culture, you and your team can go from feeling frazzled and behind in your work to having a sense of calm and control over your time. A team that feels empowered to set their daily schedules and effectively prioritize tasks will significantly boost productivity and achieve their goals and a healthy work-life balance.
Are you seeking solutions to help you and your employees use your time more efficiently? Applied Innovation’s imaging experts are ready to discover a solution to meet your institution’s unique needs. Contact one of Applied’s print specialists in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, or Tampa, Florida.