PLANNING MY DAY HOW TO
PLANNING MY DAY PRO

Don’t answer emails and messages as they come in, as doing so is distraction at its finest. For example, create separate chunks of time for answering emails, making phone calls, filing, etc. Save yourself time and mental energy by trying to complete all of one type of to-do before moving on to the next. You can create one in Lucidchart in less than a minute-that’s what we did! Eisenhower Matrix Example (Click on image to modify online) Try creating your own time management matrix and inserting items from your to-do list and day-to-day activities to evaluate how you are currently spending your time. Here’s a look at what sorts of activities fall in each quadrant.

Not urgent and not important: These activities hold little if any value and should be eliminated as much as possible.

They are generally distractions that may result from the poor planning of others. Minimize, delegate, or eliminate them because they don’t contribute to your output.

Urgent but not important: These tasks are urgent but not important.

Strive to spend most of your time in this quadrant.

Important but not urgent: These items are important but don’t require immediate action and should involve long-term development strategizing.

Important and urgent: These tasks have important deadlines with high urgency-complete them right away.

Here’s a closer look at each of these quadrants: Eisenhower Matrix (Click on image to modify online) He offers the following time management matrix, known as the Eisenhower matrix, as an organizational tool for prioritizing tasks based on these ideas of importance and urgency. To avoid this pitfall, use one of the time management tips for work found in Stephen Covey’s book First Things First. We tend to let the urgent dominate when we should really focus on activities that support our business goals. Important responsibilities support the achievement of your goals, whereas urgent responsibilities require immediate attention and are associated with the achievement of someone else’s goals. Then identify the three or four most important tasks and do those first-that way, you make sure you finish the essentials.Įvaluate your to-do list and make sure you organized it based on the importance of a task rather than its urgency. Start by eliminating tasks that you shouldn’t be performing in the first place. Daily Schedule (Click on image to modify online)Īs you organize your to-do list, prioritization is key for successful time management at work. Create a daily schedule-and stick with it. If there is a significant difference, take that into account as you plan out your schedule going forward so you can more accurately budget your time and avoid bottlenecks and missed deadlines. We often overestimate how quickly can accomplish things. At the end of your audit, compare how much time certain tasks or projects took you to complete versus how long you expected them to take.

PLANNING MY DAY PRO

Pro Tip: Assess how realistically you estimate your time. This exercise can also help you determine the time of day when you are most productive-that way, you know when to work on your projects requiring the most focus and creativity. You’ll gain a more accurate sense for how long certain types of tasks take you (which will be very helpful for executing on a later tip). Focus on activities that provide the greatest returns.Īs you conduct this time audit, it will become pretty clear how much of your time is spent on unproductive thoughts, conversations, and activities.Determine how much you can feasibly accomplish in a day.Try diligently logging your time for a week by tracking your daily activities. To optimize your personal time management, you first need to figure out where the time is going. Figure out how you’re currently spending your time.

PLANNING MY DAY HOW TO

Learn more about how to use our tools to effectively manage your time. We’ve got ten time management tips for work to get you started It’s all about personal time management-manage your time instead of letting it manage you. The good news is that there are ways to reclaim those seemingly elusive lost hours of the day. You finally walk out of the last meeting, and you start wading through emails when you get pulled into a meeting with the VP. Sitting down to finally knock out that project you’ve been procrastinating for weeks, you realize you’ve got back-to-back meetings until noon-and yes, you’re already late for the first one. You leave late, you hit traffic, and you arrive at your desk already frustrated with the world. You wake up hopeful and optimistic-not only will you meet all your deadlines, but you’ll hit the gym and make a healthy home-cooked meal, too. We’ve all experienced the woes of time management at work.

Planning my day