Nine Do’s and Don’ts of Time Management

Question: Are you running your day or is your day running you?

If effectively managing your time has become increasingly challenging, rest assured you are not alone.

I consider myself to be pretty skilled when it comes to time management, which I attribute largely to my German upbringing, where values such as discipline and punctuality were instilled in me at an early age. But no matter how ingrained my skills might be, I’ve found myself suddenly up against deadlines or unexpectedly running late. So, during my career in the corporate world and in my personal life, I have applied these nine do’s and don’ts to fine-tune my time management skills when needed:

Do’s

1. Give yourself a buffer. When planning your time, try to have a short break in between conference calls to re-set and prepare for the next meeting, or to simply take a short mental break.

2. When tackling to-do lists, start with the most urgent and most important task at hand. I utilize this grid to determine the order of my tasks:

3. Create systems, templates and establish best practices. These are all time savers. When expectations are consistent and you have a roadmap on how to tackle a task, you are more efficient in the execution. For example, in my role as a Marketing leader, my teams would create competitive matrixes and quick-reference guides for the Sales Organization, following a standardized template, so that even if the product information was different, the way the information was delivered was consistent and predictable.

4. A previous manager of mine used to say, “if a task does not bring you joy or if you can find a resource who can do the task at a lower cost than you, delegate.” I recently followed this advice when creting my website: https://belladonnacareercoach.com/ . The task did not bring me joy and I was spending lots of hours on it with little output. Then I found a service provider on Fiverr who built the site for very little money in no time.

5. Take care of you. Schedule time for yourself to re-charge your batteries. Unplug and unwind by doing something you truly enjoy.

Dont’s

6. Do not hang on to the thought of achieving perfection. Let it go! There is a point of diminishing returns on the efforts you invest in a task. There would be no innovation at all if people hadn’t taken the risk of releasing a new product or idea without it being fully baked.

7. Do not procarstinate. i previously wrote an entire blog on subject: https://beladonnacareercoach.com/procarstination/.

8. Avoid distractions. It is so easy these days to get distracted, especially if you are working from home and have children or pets roaming around while you are on a video call. Try to set boundaries such as a physical space or by setting office hours to help you focus on the task at hand.

9. Give yourself a break. Do not be so hard on yourself, if you dropped the ball. It is only human. Stuff happens, so give yourself some space and grace. I came across this quote by Paul J. Meyer: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort.” I agree with his thoughts, with the only caveat that excellence is not to be confused with perfection. If you feel you need help in managing your time more productively, there are many tools and resources to help you hone those skills, or private message me for more tips and guidance.