One of the most important tasks as an employee is to manage your time in a way that ensures you deliver high-quality work and avoid stress. However, this is not always easy, so here are five tips for better time management.
1. Who decides how you spend your working hours?
No matter where you work, there is always someone who decides how you spend your working hours. Most often, it is your immediate manager, but it can also be someone higher up in the hierarchy who decides that your time (and the money the company spends on it) should be spent on other things.
Perhaps a colleague asks you to help with a specific task or project because of your skills or experience – but suddenly the one task you agreed to do turns into an endless series of meetings, emails, and challenges.
But before you say yes to new tasks, check with your immediate manager or ask the colleague who is asking for your help to do so. If it's the CEO, your manager will most likely say yes – if it's another colleague, they may say no. The most important thing is to be aware that your manager sees you as a resource and does not want you to spend your time in other departments.
2. Prioritization and projects that grow in scope
Among the biggest “time thieves” in the workplace are changing priorities and projects that grow in scope and complexity.
To avoid losing track, it is important to have a complete overview of priorities and schedules.
A concrete project plan has a clear division of roles and responsibilities with clear goals and a clear schedule, which makes it relatively easy for you to prioritize your tasks.
Challenges will always arise during the course of a project, but these can usually be handled within the existing project plan, and again, your immediate manager will be the one to make the final decision on how you should spend your time.
However, many projects are not clearly defined and can quickly go off track. As the level of ambition increases, so does the time spent on the project, which means that there is less time for other tasks that may be more important. When prioritizing your time for the projects you are working on, ask yourself the following questions: What are the project's objectives, how will I achieve the objective, and what will I gain from achieving the objective? If you cannot answer the question quickly and accurately, your time would be better spent on other tasks.