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10 Common Time Management Mistakes: Avoiding Common Pitfalls
Not Prioritizing
It's essential to learn how to prioritize tasks effectively if you want to manage your time better.
Determine if a task is high-yield and high-priority, or low-value, "fill in" work. You'll manage your time much better during the day if you know the difference.
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Failing to Keep a To-Do List
The trick with using To-Do Lists effectively lies in prioritizing the tasks on your list. Many people use an A – F coding system (A for high priority items, F for very low priorities).
Make sure that you break large tasks or projects down into specific, actionable steps – then you won't overlook something important.
Not Setting Personal Goals
Goals give you a destination and a vision to work toward. When you know where you want to go, you can manage your priorities, time, and resources to get there. Goals also help you decide what's worth spending your time on, and what's just a distraction.
Not Prioritizing
It's essential to learn how to prioritize tasks effectively if you want to manage your time better.
Determine if a task is high-yield and high-priority, or low-value, "fill in" work. You'll manage your time much better during the day if you know the difference.
Failing to Manage Distractions
Whether they come from emails, colleagues in a crisis, or phone calls from clients, distractions prevent us from achieving flow, which is the satisfying and seemingly effortless work that we do when we're 100 percent engaged in a task.
It's vital to know how to minimize distractions and manage interruptions effectively.
Procrastination
Procrastinators feel that they have to complete a task from start to finish, and this high expectation makes them feel overwhelmed and anxious.
Instead, focus on devoting a small amount of time to starting. Tell yourself that you're only going to start on a project for ten minutes.
Taking on Too Much
Taking on too much is a poor use of your time, and it can get you a reputation for producing rushed sloppy work.
Thriving on "Busy"
An "addiction to busyness" rarely means that you're effective, and it can lead to stress.
Instead, try to slow down, and learn to manage your time better.
Multitasking
It can take 20-40 percent more time to finish a list of jobs when you multitask, compared with completing the same list of tasks in sequence.
Forget about multitasking and, instead, focus on one task at a time. That way, you'll produce higher quality work.
Not Taking Breaks
Don't dismiss breaks as "wasting time." They provide valuable down-time, which will enable you to think creatively and work effectively.
Try to take a five-minute break every hour or two.
Ineffectively Scheduling Tasks
All of us have different times of day when we feel most productive and energetic.
You can make the best use of your time by scheduling high-value work during your peak time, and low-energy work (like returning phone calls and checking email), during your "down" time.
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Prerequisites for Effective Time Management
Trying to apply time management tools without having prerequisite time management skills is unlikely to work effectively. The prerequisites are:
- Awareness about time being a limited reso...
Steps To Improve Time Management
The way to improve your Time Management skills requires us to figure out where to focus. This can be done by:
- Getting an objective self-assessment done by your peers or boss, or establishing a baseline behavior to measure your performance against.
- Understanding that it is your skills, not your personality or preferences that can be developed to provide the best results.
- Identifying the key skill(s) that you need to prioritize, and avoiding spreading yourself too thin.
Developing Awareness Skills
The key factor to consider when developing awareness skills is that effectiveness (doing things well) is as important as efficiency (doing things fast).
- Find which time of the day is your 'peak performance time.
- Treat time as money, a limited resource, and create a 'time budget' for your to-do list.
- Measure and evaluate the projected time vs the actual time taken.
- Consider which of the tasks create follow-up tasks that take up your time later.
- Take into consideration the 'opportunity cost' of spending time in an activity.
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Not Editing Your Work
Spelling, tone and grammatical mistakes can make you look careless.
- Don't rely on spell-checkers.
- Proofread your work.
- Use a dictionary to look up any words that y...
Delivering Bad News by Email
Written communication channels don't allow you to soften difficult messages with nonverbal cues.
Delivering a message in person makes it easier to pick up on signs that people have misunderstood parts of your message.
Avoiding Difficult Conversations
It's tempting to try to avoid difficult conversations, but this can cause further problems.
- Preparation is key to handling difficult conversations.
- Use tools such as the Situation – Behavior – Impact technique to encourage your people to reflect on their behavior.
- Role-play your conversation first.
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The 2 kinds of work :
- “Deep work”: using your skills to create something of value. It takes thought, energy, time and concentration.
- “Shallow work”: all the little administrative and logist...
Cal Newport
"The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. "
Cal Newport on time management