What are the best ways to improve time management at work? Our guide outlines 6 easy strategies that will let you manage your time much better.
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The mailbox is bursting at the seams, the phone is overheating and one meeting chases after another: You are slowly no longer knowing where your head is? No reason to panic! We’ll reveal 6 professional tips that you can use to improve your time management on the job and work so much more effectively.
6 strategies to improve time management at work
1. Organize emails
Set a certain amount of time in which you only take care of your email. Don’t let your Outlook reminder terrorize you every 5 minutes, just open your mailbox when you come to the office in the morning and then take half an hour to answer the e-mails. Then close the e-mail program and only look back in after a fixed number of hours. So you can concentrate better on your to-dos.
2. Turn off the phone (temporarily)
It is difficult to concentrate when the phone keeps ringing. If you need a moment of rest, just turn on the answering machine from time to time. If you don’t have one, talk to a colleague: She will answer the phone for you in the morning and write down the messages and you will take the calls in the afternoon. Inquire about the news as soon as you have completed the most urgent tasks and call the other person back if necessary.
3. Plan breaks
Your colleague has checked into your office again and wants to tell you about the great TV show she saw yesterday over a cup of coffee. The problem: You still have countless important things to do by tonight, you have to prepare a presentation and you also have an important meeting. A break now would only stress you.
Therefore: Plan your breaks and communicate them confidently with your colleagues. For example, give me a quick call and say: Today I don’t have time, but tomorrow at 3 p.m. is great for me.
4. Work with foresight
Avoid doing everything at the last minute. Most of the time you know the deadline well in advance, so you know by when the work has to be done. Get in the habit of working with foresight instead of jumping into the project a week in advance. The master plan: start work 4 weeks before an important deadline and then plan a few hours a week depending on the effort.
5. Set priorities
To-do lists sound so mundane, but they are an absolute must-have if you want to improve your time management. Instead of keeping everything in mind (which usually doesn’t work anyway), you should put all tasks on paper. No matter how small they are. You can then arrange the tasks according to priority and underline the most important points. Then put the list clearly visible on your desk. Not only that you always have an overview of everything and that ticking off to-dos on the list is also a great feeling!
6. Emergency plan
If you always get things done at the last minute, there is no room in your schedule for extra work or an unplanned meeting. Unfortunately, this ALWAYS happens in working life. Instead of panicking because your already tight time management is completely in the bin again due to the unforeseen event, you should plan a buffer for such situations. Plan your weekly tasks so that you still have some time that you can use for spontaneous tasks.
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