Breaking the Time Management Myth

"There's not enough hours in the day!" someone pines in the office most days of the week. Actually, there are, and since you can't change time, all that's left is to change the way you manage yours.

How many times have you set yourself several tasks for the day, only to find yourself at a mad rush at the end, with little accomplished? Bad time management is rife in today's business world as the distractions, and the responsibilities of our working life increase. It causes stress in the workplace, and reduces the productivity of employees. How can you stop this happening to you?

The first thing to do would be to keep a diary for a day on how you spend your time. Make a note of what task you did, how important (or how big a priority) it was, and how long you spent doing it. This should provide a quick overview of just how much time you waste on less pressing tasks. Even chatting to your colleague over the water cooler for a little too long can have a domino effect on your own time. Consequently, you find yourself alone, the last one in the office, trying to meet a deadline. You'll need to eliminate these time-wasters and catch yourself when you're doing them. It doesn't mean never talking to your colleagues again - we all need our breaks! Just perhaps twice a day, instead of every time you reach for the glass of water.

The next stage is to start a time management plan. Use the software at your disposal to help organise your day - the diary/calendar feature in Outlook is a good tool for this. You'll look forward to those breaks more, or the more "fun" tasks like organising the office party, if you're not trying to cram it in with something stressful and important like an appraisal or presentation.

This leads us onto the holy grail of time management: prioritising and breaking down tasks. If your manager has set a deadline, then treat it as immovable (even if it isn't - the more things you complete without asking for deadline extensions, the more impressed they'll be). If you've been told to do something over the next few weeks, not days, then you can set that as a lower priority. Some tasks are daily - depending on your job, you know what they are - and some are infrequent, like that party, but just as important (it must go ahead!).

Try multitasking in ways you previously might not have thought of. If you're the first person to arrive into a meeting, have a notepad ready, or a report you had to read, or make a quick call that needs to be made. Sitting there waiting and sipping coffee is a good de-stress, sure, but if you could use the time more productively, then do so.

There will be days when you just can't fit everything in, no matter how good you are at managing your time. Another skill is delegation. This doesn't mean lumping your workload on someone else, but knowing when to share tasks to get them done on time. Have you spent an hour wrestling with the photocopier, for example, when you could have put in a call to the support service to get it fixed? Or are you a "yes" person too often, when a colleague asks you to do something for them, you take time out of your own schedule to help them, often to your detriment?

You don't have to be ruthless, or give up on enjoyable things in the office, just because they eat away at your time. Just acknowledge that time is precious, you can give it, and receive it back to help you manage your day. If you're in control of it, you can manage it, and feel much better as a result. And of course, you can leave the office on time!