Every day you face a thousand things to do at work and maybe you’re thinking “I don’t have enough time!” It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed with everything that’s going on around you. The problem of many people, especially for marketers and entrepreneurs, is the fact you are spending time dabbling in too many things at once without a roadmap. But you can improve your use of time by focusing on fewer and most important tasks rather than tackling a bunch of small ones that can totally wait.
Maybe you have already done a schedule to organize all your activities, but that’s not quite enough, you have to be disciplined and actually, have a good strategy to take advantage of every single minute of your day.
In this article, you’ll learn how to plan a productivity week based on effective strategies that successful people use.
How to make an effective time management plan in 7 easy steps
1. Get your priorities straight.
- Write down what is most important to you; in other words, your values and beliefs.
- What inspires, motivates and gives you hope every day?
- What you want to be doing in the next 5-10 years?
The answers will help guide you to the right track to achieve your goals.
- Next, pull out a calendar and mark out significant activities that you need to accomplish over the next year.
- Now, break down the activities required to achieve it at weekly, and then daily, basis.
2. Schedule time every Friday or during the weekend to plan for the upcoming week. This should also be a time of reflection on what is most important to you. You don’t need the whole day, twenty minutes will be enough to do it.
3. When planning, keep a notebook to write the tasks, assignments, ideas, etc.
4. Group similar items together. For example: contact customers and answering emails could be grouped together, so when you have available time you can tackle both items at once.
5. Set aside some “personal” time in your schedule. This is very important, spend time with your family or friends, practice sports, go to the gym, whatever you want, cause all these activities will help you refresh your mind and release stress.
6. Develop a handy checklist for common items you need to deal with in the morning. This could be deciding on what to make for breakfast, what clothes will you wear to work, etc. Use a checklist to avoid having to think through these routines, this will help you release some space in your brain for more important things.
7. Reflect on your day. At the end of each day spend a little time reflecting on what you enjoyed doing. You can write it in you diary if you want. This will help you feel happier, more grateful and more fulfilled.
Apps that can help you with your time management.
Trello
Michael Hyatt, an expert in productivity, says that to have a productivity week it involves creating a simple spreadsheet that lists all your activities. So, let’s talk about Trello.
Trello is an amazing tool that serves to organize projects in your work, tasks in the home, trips and whatever you want. Using a highly visual approach to time and project management, you can move cards around so you can see at a glance what needs to be done and when.
Your ideal week plan could be something like the one below.
Essentially, activities that contribute to your goals and priorities can be white; those not related to my goals can be red. This ensures that you are working on what matters most.
If you want to know more about how trello works, i recommend you this blog article What Trello Is & Why You Should Use It for Project Management.
Asana
Asana is another very useful tool, Asana helps to do a follow-up of all the work of your team.
Asana allows you to know the one who is doing what and for when. The communication is centred and is realizable, that’s why you will always know the condition of the work in your team and you can have the results you want.
Asana reduces work over the work
65 % of the clients says that Asana reduced the quantity of e-mails and of meetings with their team. If you want to explore more about Asana I recommend you this web page: Ways to use Asana
Hubstaff
Now I want to show this amazing tool. Hubstaff time tracker runs as software on your desktop or as a mobile app making it easy to track time. Once the time is tracked you can invoice clients, pay employees, see in-depth reporting and much more.
Hubstaff helps you to improve your productivity by keeping a record about how you manage your time in every task.
I hope all this information can help you organize better your personal and professional time, these tips can be applied in both if not all areas of your life and please comment and let us know what’s your current time management method?
