Practical tips and techniques that will repeatedly help you manage your time more efficiently at the office.

 

Time-Logs

A time-log is an effective way to see where your time actually goes to during the working day. Record the information for about 2 weeks to get a representative picture of time spent.  By logging activities and the time taken to complete them, the time-log provides useful information to know where your time is going.

 

Quality Time

Quality time is where you can plan to do the most important high priority tasks.

• It allows for deep concentration through eliminating interruptions
•  It imposes a structure on work
•  It allows you to move away from reactive work to proactive work

 Dealing with Documents

Document handling can steal a vast quantity of time from your working day.  Improve your document handling by handling documents only once by:

•  Act on what is required by the document
•  File the document for reference later
•  Dump the document

 Managing Interruptions

In any given day we are all interrupted at some stage from the activity that we are undertaking. Whether this is by a phone call or a colleague, they all can impact the time you have allocated to a particular task. Your objective should be to try to reduce the number of unwanted interruptions by applying the following practical techniques:

• Create a visual barrier at your workspace to reduce the incidence of ‘drop-in’ visits
• Don’t have extra chairs in your workspace – people do not hang around as long if they must stand
• For important work – move to another space so the potential interrupters can’t find you!
• Tell people that you are busy, explain why and arrange to contact them at a more suitable time

 Managing Your Workspace

How your workspace is organized has an impact on how efficient you are at managing your time. The following will help you improve your efficiency:

•  De-clutter your desk by clearing it at the end of each working day
•  File documents once they have been used
• Purge files regularly
• Organize a workflow system in your space

 Managing Your Phone

The telephone can be responsible for eating vast quantities of your time. Although many of these calls are a necessary part of your everyday work it is important that you manage the phone by using the following simple rules.

• Batch your outward calls
• Delegate calls that you don’t have to make personally to one of your team
• Terminate calls once the business has been done
• Set up a rotation in your team for handling incoming calls

Remember time management is a skill that can be learned . . . All you have to be is open and committed to learning.  Check out my website at www.balanceharmony.com

–Melinda Smith, CPO®

© Copyrighted, Melinda Smith, www.balanceharmony.com