Favorite Five Time Management Tips
Posted on Sep. 28, 2022 / Favorite Five / Subscribe 0
AUTHOR: Sarah Viaud Contact
I don’t know about you, fellow Bostonians, but I am fully ready for autumn in the city. I’m ready to leave the sun-soaked, humid days on the cape, and walk down a golden tree-lined Newbury Street, or sip my coffee on crisp cool mornings in the Public Garden. I even have an itch to – quoting the timeless Tom Hanks in one of my favorite autumn-themed, culturally-moot movies from the 20th century, You’ve Got Mail, "...buy school supplies. I would send you [all] a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."
With the start of a new season comes a return to business as usual – the commute into the office, the time-crunch of deadlines and shifting priorities, or even the Zoom meeting slog can eat up our working time. As such, I’m sharing my five favorite time management tips!
- Create the perfect morning and evening routine for your lifestyle. Spend just 60 minutes in the mornings setting up your version of a high-achieving day. Maybe that includes a well-rounded breakfast, a workout, or even meditating and reading a chapter of a new book. Show your body and your mind that you can handle what the day throws at you. Then in the evenings, reflect on what went well that day and spend a little time preparing for the new day ahead. This could look like preparing lunches, picking out your clothes for the office, or preparing your coffee maker. Saving just a few minutes in the morning can eliminate some of the hustle and bustle in the mornings, leaving you some extra moments to yourself in the morning.
- Block time on your calendar for some deep focus time. We all know how demanding deadlines can be, but who’s stopping you from blocking off a little time to get through the small, but oh-so-important items on your to-do? We all know how good it feels to cross off those pesky tasks that build up, so by building in these work blocks into your day, it can allow you to be efficient and effective in a short period of time.
- Take time for yourself. Self-care and work/life balance are some of the buzziest words in the workplace right now, and for good reason. Creating time to reset and recharge will only make us all more effective as we gear up for the next project. This could look like blocking off time for lunch everyday, a daily 10-minute stretch break, or better yet, if you can bear it, placing your phone on silent mode in another room to really give your eyes a well-deserved break from screen time. And if the stress is really building up, ask a supervisor for a ½ day or full day to rest when priorities are in a manageable state.
- Set limits on distractions. One of the easiest breaks for me throughout the day involves picking up my phone to “quickly” check social media. Sometimes, self-admittedly, that quick break can turn into 30 minutes easily. Am I alone here? If not, try setting aside time on your calendar for quick breaks as mentioned above, being sure to start a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes. That way you won’t get lost in the rabbit hole of the daily news or what your high school ex is doing these days.
- Use the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize tasks. For the analytical time managers out there, this tool is for you. Drawing inspiration from President Eisenhower’s quote, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” On a sheet of paper, draw a matrix with four quadrants, labeling the first column urgent, the second column non-urgent, the first row important, and the second row not so important. This creates four priorities in the matrix (from left to right, top to bottom) quadrant 1: do, quadrant 2: plan, quadrant 3: delegate, and quadrant 4: postpone/remove. Then look at your to-do list and try to place your tasks into these quadrants, moving from 1 to 4.
Eisenhower Matrix
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