How do you manage your time effectively?

Plenty of us would like more time to get the work done, and time for a hobby, for ourselves, for family. Unfortunately, you cannot buy extra hours in the day. A day has always lasted 24 hours and it always will. As people who do social media marketing, we plan most of each day for ourselves. That gives us the “freedom” to set the details of our own daily work. But it is worth remembering that working this way takes the self-discipline to get through the job in a sensible amount of time. So how do you manage it effectively? Here are a few of our tricks!

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF!

Yes, it sounds obvious, but it is the first step to managing your time effectively. Pay attention to your own patterns and work out which part of the day you are most productive in. Some people work better in the morning, others are far sharper in the afternoon. Do the hard tasks at the point in the day when you can feel your brain running at its best.

THE 60/40 THEORY

There is a 60/40 rule that says we should fill 60% of our time with tasks from the list and leave 40% for the things we did not see coming. The ones inside that 60% need to be prioritized. Splitting the day up this way cuts down the feeling of being “short on time” — we are calmer, less stressed and less frustrated.

ASSERTIVENESS

Plenty of us heard it from parents or family from an early age: “be assertive!” Back then we probably did not know how much that trait would come in handy at work. We should protect our concentration, because without it there is no effectiveness and no productivity to speak of.

Do not let anyone interrupt you while you are working on something important. If a teammate needs something from you, ask whether it is an emergency or whether it can wait a while.

TIME LIMITS

“People spend as long on a piece of work as the time they have available. If no deadline is set, tasks become open-ended, and that is how they get treated from then on.” — Henryk Bieniok.

Set the times of day and the window in which you will hit your goals. You do not have to plan your time down to the minute, because all sorts of unforeseen things come up over the course of a day. Try to set a realistic deadline for every task, with the unexpected factored in.

USE A CALENDAR

Using a calendar is basic, but not everyone remembers the basics. Keeping a planner carefully and regularly gives us a sense of being organized, and with it some inner calm. We stop worrying that we have forgotten something, which makes us more efficient. We can go with a traditional paper calendar or an electronic one, Google's for example.

STOP CHECKING YOUR EMAIL COMPULSIVELY

Set the hours in which you reply to email. Checking the inbox every few minutes distracts you and pulls you off whatever you are working on. It makes getting fully focused and engaged again that much harder.

SLOW DOWN A LITTLE

More than one boss would put their head in their hands at the heading on this one. 🙂 Paradoxically, trying to get through your work as fast as possible will not get you the result you want. Make haste slowly, and the outcome will certainly be more satisfying. One valuable thing to end on: you cannot do everything! Do not demand that you get too many things done in a very short time.

Bringing the habits above into your life looks very simple on the face of it, but it takes no small amount of effort. As people whose line of work has made us experienced in this, we guarantee it will definitely pay off!

Good luck!