It is said that we live in a digital world. Whoever
has a smartphone, understands why. The Internet and the constant technological
progress are changing both our private and professional lives.
We now need to be faster and we expect everything around
us to be fast.
Therefore, technological improvements that are helping us to “Save
time” are extremely valued. At the same time we need to face new time thieves, especially
from the online environment.
What to do?!
Here are some thoughts on how adapt time
management to the digital era.
If
you don’t plan your day some else will do it for you
This will continue to be true no matter how much the
technology will impact our daily lives. If you start the day without having
your own plan, you will end up drifting away through random tasks coming from
other people. All of them will have the tendency to be important and urgent,
which will eventually bring you to frustration and overtime.
So step
1: Start your day by writing
down your plan.
Step
2: Stick with your plan.
All other new things that are coming during the day you should plan for a time
convenient for you. This way you will
manage to control our schedule and time. At the beginning it might be difficult
for the others to understand that they need to wait, but after the first situation,
they will know what your working style is and adapt to it.
Use
the technology in your favor
Choose an online calendar or planner and maintain your
daily tasks there. With the help of the multiple functions most online
calendars have you can set reminders, postpone activities, make notes, search
for past activities and many other things.
At the end of the day you will not only achieve more and avoid forgetting
things, but you will also have the satisfaction of looking at all the things
you have completed during the day.
Plan
your ‘update’ breaks
Being all the time connected to the
internet and having access to so much information can be very tempting.
The innocent and quick checking of the social media
accounts is taking much more time than one can imagine. Besides the time
actually spent checking the updates of the people in your network on different
social media websites, there is also the time you need to get back mentally
into the topic we were before.
Planning the short ‘update breaks’ will help you not only reduce the time you
spend doing this but also realize that you haven’t missed anything by not
checking 2 hours your accounts.
How good are you in managing time at work? What are your best three things you do to manage time at work effectively?