5 Things to Manage your Time at Work

More often than not we would like to arrive on Friday completely exhausted. Our working week (if at best it ends on Friday) is often exhausting. We work all the necessary hours, but many times we realize that they have not been enough. We still have a thousand tasks to do and some reports to deliver. It’s just one example, but it happens to a lot more people than you might imagine. In fact, the hard landing of teleworking as a modality has wreaked real havoc. The inability to organize ourselves, the difficulty of reconciling work and family at home, and any other circumstance (read, a pandemic) have made and continue to make the days seem endless and, despite this, we are unable to shelve the agenda weekly. Can anything be done to get out of this chaos? The answer is: of course yes. And we are going to give you 5 practical tricks so that you can solve it yourself and start to better manage your time at work. Let’s go there.

1. Use (well) organization systems

It will seem obvious to you. Use an organization system? How long has the diary been invented? It is true that there are infinite systems to organize ourselves, but we do not always have the most appropriate one or we know how to make good use of it. Currently, in addition to the classic diaries and other methods, such as the bullet journal there are other methods. Today not even the agendas give us respite: we have Google Calendar, Asana , Evernote , Basecamp, and a long etcetera of digital tools that in the form of an app usually interfere in our mobile to fill all facets of our lives with occupations.

There are no bad tools, but you have to know how to use them. Try the ones you need and find (because you will, for sure) the one that is most comfortable for you to use . The one that really helps you to be focused on your goals and at the same time is practical for you. Otherwise, you will continue to be stuck in a soup of tasks that is difficult to cope with.

2. Clearly set your daily goals

Are you one of those who arrive at work and start doing things haphazardly? Relax, you are more human than you think. One of the gestures that will help you the most to solve your daily chaos is to establish your list of objectives daily. What do you need to do today? What must you deliver? There is a popular saying that says Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today .

This is true, but not quite. Spend the first few minutes of your day (or the last few, whatever suits you best) writing down your practical goals for the next day. When you start you will realize that you know exactly what you have to do and you will launch to tackle it. But you don’t need to get to work on tasks that are due in a few days, if you still have today pending. Just clearly define your goals and go for them. But today.

3. Learn to priories (but now)

We often tend to give out those tasks that seem simpler or faster to do and leave those that are more complex, tedious or overwhelming for last. However, it may be that the tasks that we like to do the most are not entirely urgent and the others end up being overlapped at the last minute, waiting for some brave person to carry them out.

There is something you can do besides approach these tasks fearlessly. And it is to think about giving you a margin with respect to the delivery date . In this way, in addition to getting work done, you will have an additional advantage that will allow you to dedicate more time to them if necessary. And if you have leftovers, you will have won.

4. Assign a time to tasks

Another thing that you can do and that is tremendously useful is to assign an execution time to your tasks . It is not about doing them at full speed. Actually, allocating this time frame should help you plan your day, knowing that after you have finished. You can start another one and so on.

The objective is that you reach the end of your day having done everything you had planned. To allocate time to tasks, you must take into account your daily experience and, of course, priorities, so as not to leave unresolved what is most urgent.

Also read : How to enhance your previous experience?

5. Dedicate your work time to work

You will say that we are facing another obvious thing, but we can guarantee that it is not. If you work online, you will know how difficult it is to stop responding to the requests that are constantly arriving by email , the Whatsapp that does not stop ringing on your phone or the social networks, how sibylline, they are draining minutes and minutes of our day by day without us realizing it.

How many times do you pause your work to make queries on Google, look at the odd (virtual) shop window or answer group messages? Reserve work time for work and, if you need it, take a five-minute break to do these little things that, although it may not seem like it, are undermining your workday without you realizing it.