Time Management Is Key For a Successful Work Day

It’s important to be realistic about how much time you have to complete your tasks. Let’s say you have 5 tasks. This doesn’t sound like many, but stop to think how long it takes to complete each one. If each requires 2 hours, you’ll need more than one work day to complete them all. On the flip side, you may be staring down a list of 16 tasks but they each take 30 minutes or less. This could easily fit into a single work day.

Sometimes our minds deceive us on what we can really accomplish. We look at our assignments and get overwhelmed. Get a handle on the amount of time needed to complete your work through something called time blocking.
To me, time blocking is similar to a game of Tetris. You can visually organize your tasks to maximize the most effective use of your time with just a little thinking ahead. If you let your tasks build up, game over. To do this, you need to utilize your calendar!

Start with your high priority and urgent assignments and block out time to work on it during your workday or in smaller blocks throughout your work week. Then, fill in less pressing tasks in the remaining open time slots. Be sure to give yourself ample time when blocking out tasks. This way if you get done earlier than estimated, you’ll have more time to work with which is a win!

Make sure you don’t overload your day, avoid burnout and block out time for breaks such as to eat take a quick walk or simply look away from your computer. It’s also a good idea to block out a little time for planning and scheduling your next day or week in order to make this method a habit.

Personally, I like to use Google Calendar to schedule because I can set reminders to ding when my next time-block is supposed to start. This helps me stay on my scheduled routine. I also attach any necessary assets to the event’s description so I don’t have to search for what I working on.