6 time management tips to avoid too much work in progress
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One of the best time management secrets seems overly simplistic, but it’s knowing what to finish and what to leave undone. Most people have a hard time starting things that pop up and seem urgent, and they can’t finish them because… guess what? Something even more urgent arose.
This is how you end the day tired and frustrated, wondering what happened to your day that nothing really got done. The reality is that you have most likely worked hard, but not accomplished much. That is, you started working on various things, but they are still on your to-do list, waiting to be completed, also known as work in progress (WIP). You start emails that you never send or start an analysis that you never finish. What happen?
Some of the reasons why it is difficult to finish tasks:
Distracting yourself with notifications, breaks, or social media Multitasking, starting more “urgent tasks” as soon as they appear, requested by emails, slack messages, or your manager’s last minute request Questioning yourself: when you try to do it “perfectly” you can spending hours completing a task, fearful it will never be good enough following a preset schedule or task lists that are not realistic enough
There are six ways to avoid this in the future:
1) time box Or allocate a specific time for each activity and reserve it in your calendar so you know how much time you need to dedicate and you work too much due to perfectionism. You can also use the Pomodoro Technique or run a timer every time you start a task to remind yourself to focus on it for a specific amount of time.
3) To accept what have you done; perfection is the enemy of action. Author James Clear says, “If I have to write an article every Tuesday, it doesn’t matter how good or bad I feel about the article; I try to do my best, but I still stick to the schedule. Sometimes it’s just that you’re too hard on yourself.” Stop procrastinating and get back into action.
3) get to “done”: Be sure to check it off your list completely by being aware of all the steps that the task requires. Avoid “almost done” activities like an email written but not sent. They fill their schedule with no impact on results. Don’t start the next task until you finish what you’re working on. If the task is too long to finish, break it down into smaller doable parts. Use a personal Kanban or any tool like Sunsama to help you focus more, one task at a time.
4) Learn to identify what is urgent and what it is not. What kind of messages can be read later in the day? What kind of tasks/requests can they expect? Are expiration dates defined and visible?
5) Have a daily planning routine. Plan your day each morning, or the night before, to get a better idea of how many meetings you have during the day and how much time you have left to finish your work. Sometimes you have a long to-do list, which is unrealistic because it doesn’t take into account the time you spend in meetings. That’s probably the reason for your frustrations! Define a smaller “to do today” list that seems more realistic and have a separate to-do list in case you have more time to move forward with more tasks.
6) divide and conquer– If you can’t plan your day, at least divide your hours into three categories: meeting/team time, work time, and task-finding time. It will help you become more focused and clear about what needs to be done and when.
Unfortunately, most of our frustrations are simply created by our own minds. Pushing yourself into an unrealistic workload and trying to make everything perfect and faster than anyone else won’t help you in the long run. Setting realistic expectations, defining time slots for f-type tasks, and avoiding multitasking will help you save time and do more with less.
Source: news.google.com