6 Tips to Help You Use Your Time More Effectively and Get Your Work Done  

Time is a precious resource, even at work. These days, with many organizations doing more with less, everyone is busy. It’s not uncommon to get pulled in multiple directions while juggling various projects at once. We’ve all been there. There are many self-help books and websites dedicated to this subject.

Because we’re all short on time, we can all use some quick tips to help us get everything done. Try one or more of the following:

• Create a to-do list for every day of the week. Before you leave the office on Friday, take a moment to start to-do lists for each day of the following week. Write down the tasks you know you will have on certain days, whether they are one-off requests or little jobs that will help keep you on track for a larger project. During the week, keep adding to the lists as things come up. Once you complete an item, cross it off the list. This will help keep you on course for the week and provide you with a sense of accomplishment when you complete a task.
• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Putting high-priority items first and taking the time to plan out your work is essential to your success. It’s not uncommon to get bogged down in busy work or responding to emails, but focus on your priority items. It’s important to get your significant tasks done early so you can avoid feeling rushed later. If you feel that you have too many items that are urgent, talk to your boss about your competing priorities and ask for advice.
• Use Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix to help you evaluate your tasks. If you’ve read Covey’s book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” you’re already familiar with this concept. Essentially, tasks fall into four categories and priority should be given as follows: 1. Important and Urgent; 2. Important and Not Urgent; 3. Not Important and Urgent; and 4. Not Important and Not Urgent. That said, you want to spend most of your time in the second category, because these are priority tasks that should not be rushed to complete. Take a look at the matrix to see where you are spending a majority of your time and adjust, as needed. This Psychology Today article explains more.
• Stay organized. You’ll find you’re more productive when you are organized. That includes your office space and your inbox. If you have stacks and stacks of papers on your desk, you probably won’t be able to find what you need for that one project that suddenly became a priority. Similarly, if your inbox has hundreds of messages, you’ll spend time you don’t have looking for that request your boss made of you. If you find yourself in this situation, take some time to organize. Figure out what kind of filing system will work best for your papers, and consider grouping your saved emails by topic, and/or keeping only the messages you need to respond to in your inbox.
• Take a break.  Do you ever notice that if you don’t take a break during the day, you begin to lose interest in work and actually become less productive? Try to get away from your desk each day for lunch or, if that’s not possible, for 10 to 15 minutes to take a brief walk around your building or floor. You’ll find that you’ll feel more refreshed and are better able to focus on important tasks if you take a break from staring at your computer screen. This Health Magazine article provides additional background on why taking a break is important.
• Protect your time. Ever feel like you are just bouncing from one meeting to the next and don’t have time to get all your work done? Or maybe in a meeting, you think, “This could have been solved with an e-mail or phone call?” While you can’t always control the meetings that show up on your calendar, be mindful of the ones you schedule. And, if you see a meeting pop up on your calendar that will discuss an issue that could be solved by a simple phone conversation, suggest that approach to the meeting organizer.

Different strategies work for different people, so try out a suggestion or two from the list above to see what works for you. Remember, this statement remains true: Practice makes perfect. Hold yourself accountable to creating a structure that works for you to help keep you on task and get everything done.