The Top 5 Time
Management Mistakes You're Making
From the amount of paper on your
desk to the amount of time you check your email, this is what's standing in the
way of getting things done.
We keep to-do lists and try to stay
on top of our schedules, yet no matter how hard we try, tasks continue to evade
us. The to-do list gets longer and it feels like time is slipping away by the
hour. In a recent survey by the online time-tracking tool Toggl, the following five mistakes were
identified by customers as the top things that were standing in their way of
time management success.
While a to-do list may be an
effective way to organize your thoughts about what needs to get done during the
day, failing to prioritize tasks means your most important work can slip off
your radar. "If we don’t know where we’re going, we’re just jumping from
task to task," says productivity coach Kimberly Medlock.
Failing to prioritize may be a reflection of our current workplace environment
and expectations.
Don’t ask what tasks you feel
like working on, but what you have to work on
"Most people who work in teams
feel pressured to do whatever their co-workers or bosses ask from them without
reprioritizing," says Toggl CEO, Alari Aho. As you’re planning your day,
week, or month, ask yourself what are the most important tasks. Don’t ask what
tasks you feel like working on, but what you have to work on.
"Often, the important task, the thing that really weighs on your mind, is
the one that we tend to procrastinate on because of the mental fortitude it
would take to get focused on it," says Medlock. It’s more tempting to do
those small five-minute tasks throughout the day rather than the one that
requires intense focus, even when it's that larger task that will get you
further ahead.
Overachievers are especially guilty
of this time-management sin. Thinking something will only take a few minutes
and it ends up eating up a half hour is a common pitfall of A-type
overachievers who never want to turn down an opportunity but don’t calculate
how much of their time that opportunity will eat up. To avoid this
time-management mistake, Medlock recommends jotting down the amount of time
each task on your to-do list will take.
If a task takes 25 or 30 minutes, it
should be scheduled on your calendar.
Another trick is to double the amount of
time you think each task will take. So, if you think a task will take a
half-hour, block off an hour, just to be safe. Otherwise, you may end up
pulling an all-nighter.
Before starting your work day, take
10 minutes to schedule your day. "Every 10 minutes you spend on planning
saves you an hour in execution," says Aho. But don’t schedule yourself
100%. Leave some space for new and urgent tasks.
"Distractions are triggers to
procrastination," says Aho. Among the top distractions are email and
social media. To avoid distractions, Medlock recommends turning off email
notifications when you’re trying to focus on a particular task or schedule
notifications to come once every hour or two so you aren’t distracted every two
minutes by a pop-up.
Blocking off a specific time in the
day to check email is also a great way to manage this distraction, and will
improve your performance. "Constantly checking email often means we
respond after quick glances and a quick un-proofread reply back. That often
wastes even more time and costs us even more when we have to apologize or
clarify what we meant to say," says Medlock.
Physical clutter is another distraction
that is easily avoided. "Those piles of paper on your desk speak to you
all day long and it’s just a constant distraction of what you haven’t
done," says Medlock. Clear off your desk at the end of every workday,
filing away paperwork that doesn’t need to be on your desk.
"The only two ways to find more
time is to eliminate or simplify," says Medlock. "Until you’re
tracking your time, you can’t know what you can eliminate or simplify."
Although taking out a pen and paper and writing down every single thing you do
during the course of the day may seem like a waste of time, it can actually be
your biggest insight into your personal time management mistakes.
Tracking your time for one or two
weeks can help you to identify what’s standing in the way of your
time-management success. Are you constantly being interrupted by phone calls or
co-workers knocking on your door? Are you surfing the web too much, or checking
email too often? "The numbers don’t lie. So when you look at a list with
numbers of how you’re spending your time, that’s when you can get more
strategic about what you can eliminate or simplify," says Medlock.
Experts agree, there’s really no
such thing as multitasking. What we have come to term multitasking is actually
called task shifting, and it’s extremely harmful to our brains. "Your
brain was designed for thinking and reasoning, not for managing all of your
to-do lists," says Medlock. Staying on task may mean setting a timer and
focusing on that one task for a specific amount of time. Repeating the mantra,
"right now I’m (preparing this presentation)", can also help you to
stay focused and avoid shifting from one task to another.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3048828/hit-the-ground-running/the-top-5-time-management-mistakes-youre-making?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-weekly-newsletter-featured&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=07242015
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