“We have all the time in the world” or “There just aren’t enough hours in the day!” Can you relate to either of those sentences? The chances are that for most of us, it’s the second sentence that we use a lot.
In our increasingly busy lives, it can feel like we are always playing catch-up – so much to do and too little time to do it in! When we have many projects or tasks which all seem important, how do we choose which to do first? How can we possibly meet all the demands placed on us at work or at home?
The answer is, we can’t.
Unless we learn how to structure and manage our time more efficiently to increase our productivity, we can work very hard and seem to get nowhere. Effective time management is about working smarter, not harder. When we are productive, we feel a great sense of achievement and our confidence grows. This is not the same as doing loads of jobs badly because we have tried to squeeze too many things into the time available, or we are rubbish at saying “no”.
To prevent ourselves from being overloaded and overwhelmed by everyday life, we need to learn time management strategies and systems that allow us to achieve success, be highly productive and remain sane!
To be successful at managing our time, we need to learn how to list our tasks and projects effectively and how to plan, prioritise and delegate them whilst creating systems that help us to use technology and social media to our advantage.
If you are in a leadership and management role, not only do you have to be efficient at managing your own time, but also ensure the time management abilities of others are adequate to guarantee productivity and keep workplace stress to a minimum.
Is you feel this is something you need some more guidance with? Take our interactive and engaging online course in Time Management to assess your current time management strategies and learn how to adopt systems and techniques to become a much more effective and productive you, whilst reducing stress.
