If your team is struggling with productivity, MindNation has a repertoire of virtual webinars to help employees with time management, manage stress, and avoid burnout. Book these talks for your team by emailing [email protected].
When you are better at planning your day, prioritizing work tasks, and eliminating distractions, you can achieve your goals and be less impacted by stress or burnout. Whether you’re a student, stay-at-home-parent, or working in a company, time management is an essential skill to have.
Here are some things you can do to manage your time better:
“By learning the art of saying a tactful “no” to others, you’ll protect your time budget and improve your focus on your most valuable activities.”
Salma Sakr, MindNation Chief Growth Officer
- Avoid multitasking. Many people believe that multitasking makes them productive, but all that shifting back and forth between tasks isn’t actually that efficient because each time you do it, it takes your brain more time to refocus. So try to complete one project or task at a time before moving to the next one; your brain will thank you for it.
- Merge different email accounts into one inbox. According to a 2019 report by management consulting company McKinsey & Co., the average professional spends 28% of the work day reading and email. Get this time back by making a few changes to your email settings and having all incoming email delivered to just one inbox.
- Treat your calendar as your time budget. Time isn’t money, but it does behave like money; it must be budgeted because when it’s gone, it’s gone. So when you schedule things into your calendar, think of it the same way you would think about withdrawing money from a bank account. Everyone has a weekly limit of 168 hours; try your best to live within this time budget and never overdraw.
- Avoid having back-to-back-to-back appointments. Leave space between your appointments for unexpected interruptions, to take a moment to relax, or to prepare for the next meeting.
- Say “No” more often than you say “Yes.” By learning the art of saying a tactful “no” to others, you’ll protect your time budget and improve your focus on your most valuable activities.
- Procrastinate properly. When a new idea comes into your head, ask yourself, “Do I need to do this now, or can I do it later?” Appropriate procrastination can help you, because you’re still going to complete those ideas, just at a later date. Don’t limit your calendar to what can be done today or within a week; instead, think in terms of months or even years.
- Identify your Most Valuable Activities (MVAs). These are the top two activities that you excel at, the ones that would cost you the most per hour to pay someone else to do. All the other activities that you do during work time other than those two MVAs are your less valuable activities, or LVAs.
In order to achieve maximum results during the limited amount of work time you have each week, prioritize your MVAs in your calendar and delegate LVAs to your team or your colleagues when possible. By leaving less room for options, you minimize the temptation to multitask and improve your overall focus. The result: more disposable time, and you reach your goals faster.
Time will always fill the space you give it, so use it wisely.
By Salma Sakr, MindNation Chief Growth Officer
MindNation Blog 