In a busy working environment, it is essential that you make the best use of your time. This article explores how you can find out what saps your time and correct the error of your ways for your own benefit.
What Takes Up Your Time?
The first thing to do is to discover and label what stops you from completing tasks that require your attention. Some will immediately spring to mind like the telephone or emails, but the only way to really understand this is to monitor at least one full day at work, or if possible several. If you work closely with a colleague you can ask them to record this for you as you may well miss some interruptions (intentionally or not). We know people who have monitored their day and been amazed how much time one matter took up of their working day - 3 hours reading emails is a lot of lost working time!
Common time sappers include:
If you find a lot of interruptions are people visiting you, can you manage these people better? If it is members of your team coming with minor problems, can they save them up and see you at a set time each day? If it is general visits that you cannot manage in this way can you limit them to a very short period of time, explaining at the end of that time that you have some urgent matter to attend to?
If the personal visits are made by you, are they essential or urgent? Ask yourself before you leave your desk whether you can deal with the visit on the telephone instead of in person, or can it be avoided all together by sending an email? Managing time on personal visits can save you considerable time over the course of a week or month.
Emails/Web Browsing
If you discover that you spend too much time reading emails, you need to manage your time better. If you currently check emails as soon as they appear but do not strictly need to, why not set an hourly reminder to check emails and only read them when that alarm rings. Turn off the new email notification, set your alarm for the next hour and then make really good use of the time before your next email check!
Tea/Coffee Fiends
If you make coffee or tea whenever you feel like it, the next time you are thinking of making one why not set yourself a target eg "I will finish doing x before I make the next cup of tea". You will feel much better making the drink once you have hit your target!
Messy Desks
Most of us know that we work better with a clear desk. Those that say otherwise may have spent years convincing themselves that a messy desk works for them but they know that really a clearer desk would make finding information much less stressful. If you carry out the exercise of recording the time spent during your day if you have a messy desk you will soon see the wasted time adding up. Getting into the discipline of clearing your desk every night will make each following day far more effective.
Firefighting
If you find a lot of your day is spent firefighting - ie dealing with urgent matters that must be attended to immediately this is often a sign that you have failed to prioritise your current workload. At the start of each day you should assess what you need to attend to, estimate a time for the task and then prioritise each task. If you have several small tasks that will only take a few minutes you might decide to attend to them first so that you can tick several items off your list. However, you should only do this if doing so will not cause another task to blow up and then need your firefighting skills.
Summary
Your time can be sapped by many different items. Identifying your main offenders allows you to effectively plan to lessen the time they sap from your day. If you continually manage your time better by planning your day you will continually achieve more, enjoy your working day more and generally be both financially and mentally better off.
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