15 August 2009

7 Realistic Time Management Techniques to Effectively Deal with Heavy Workload

Prevent stress and be more productive at work by following religiously time management techniques such as identifying and getting rid of “time stealers”, knowing and setting priorities, being organized, knowing and setting priorities, stopping procrastination, not being overconfident, and take a break.

There are times in which we are placed in a situation where we have so many things to do yet we only have so little time to accomplish them all. Whether you’re a student or an employee, being in this state can be very stressful and overwhelming. This eventually can affect different aspects of one’s life – physically, psychologically and mentally – which can lead to altered concentration or focus, and low productivity. The only solution for this problem is by learning to manage your time to accomplish all your goals and tasks. Below are techniques in order for you to do so:

Identify and get rid of “time stealers”

“Time stealers” are one of the main obstacles why you only have little time to get work done. They eat up some of your time when instead you ought to be concentrating on far important things. Time stealers can be telephone calls or chit-chats with friends or co-workers, watching television, and so on. Learn to identify what distractions are slowing you down in accomplishing your work and when you do, start to minimize them slowly and in a timely manner.

Know and set your priorities

You need to know that it’s impossible for you to do all things in one time. Know and set your priorities so that you know what to do first and which task can be done at a later time. To do this, you need to list down the things you ought to do and classify them if their urgent or not. Accomplish first task that need to be done at once.

Be organized

Two ways of being organized at work are getting rid of clutters and following a schedule diligently. Too much clutter in your work area vibrates pressure and stress, and this would generally be a cause of delay when doing projects or certain assignments. A clean work area motivates you to work. Keep things in cabinets and put those you use often somewhere very accessible to you, and throw things you don’t need any more. Following a schedule keeps you in track of the things you’re going to do. Plan ahead on what you’re going to do the next day or the next few weeks so that all your tasks won’t meet half way. An overwhelming amount of workload would be the last thing that you want to get yourself into. Also try to fit play, family life and social activities to your schedule to prevent burnout.

Stop procrastination

Procrastination is the leading cause why tasks and assignments bundle up into piles because you are constantly avoiding things that you should do. Decreasing this would expand a lot of time for you to work and lessen workload.

Don’t be overconfident

Always saying “yes” to practically every task assigned to you because you think you can do it all increases the likelihood of compiling too many workloads that makes it very hard for you to handle. It is best that you only accept tasks you are genuinely confident to do and learn to say “no’ to tasks that seems not to fit in your qualifications or abilities. Delegate tasks to co-employees or to team members, if possible, to lighten burden.

Don’t be overconfident

Another important principle of time management is to be carefully choose the amount of your working schedule.  More often than not, the difficulty of  being loaded with too much work to perform is because of  your tendency to just  say yes to many tasks.  Make your own yardstick in accepting several tasks at a time.  You can also entrusts other tasks to colleagues.

Take a break

Insert some doses of relaxation and enough sleep to your schedule. All work and no play could bring your systems down and drive your knots crazy. Take breaks in between work to release pressure and take enough hours of sleep to energize you every day.

Managing time and accomplishing all your workload is very challenging. They must work in harmony to be able to see an increase in your productivity and decrease in your stress level. The only key to do this is to learn to take charge and discipline yourself because even though you already know all time management techniques but still you lack dedication, it would still be awfully hard for you to balance your time and effectively use it well.

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