When people are asked if they manage their time well, they give positive answer. We did a few online polls and found that many users confess to feel stressed out with a feeling constant overload as they work late to hit the deadlines. Another common time management mistake is when a day seems to go from one crisis to another. Many of us would agree that there is always room for improvement of our time management skills. The hardest is to identify the mistakes that we make, yet changing our time management patters could greatly contribute to our productivity. And To Do Checklist is willing to help you with that. Our company has made a research and put together a list of common time management mistakes.
Mistake #1. Failing To Keep a To-Do List
Recall a moment in your life when you had a nagging feeling that something important was forgotten (a crucial piece of work). This is the first step to identifying if your use To Do Checklist app on the daily basis.
- The main secret to using To Do Checklist correctly is to set the task priorities and put them on your to do list.
- Instead of using A – F coding system, try to use the system of important and urgent tasks to have a better picture of what needs to be done.
- Your task should be specific. If you have something like ‘start on budget proposal’, which is ineffective, the task doesn’t entail results and lacks specifics causing procrastination as it misses key step, the action.
- The large projects on your To Do Checklist should always be broken down to smaller tasks that are doable.
- Task is a specific and actionable step that ensures important actions are not overlooked.
Mistake #2. Failing to Prioritize
Sometimes prioritizing is a hard thing to do as you tend to lose your focus, especially if you are facing the seemingly-urgent overflow of tasks. But learning to prioritize your tasks is the key to effective time management.
Mistake #3. No Personal Goals
Personal goals are essential as they give you a destination and vision to work toward. When personal goals aren’t set, you don’t know, which directions to choose. Quickly answer these questions: do you know where you’d like to be in the next 6 months? A year? 5 years? 10 years? Setting your personal goals will allow you to manage your priorities, time and resources, and will light up the things that are not worth spending time on.
Mistake #4. Procrastination?
Usually, procrastination occurs when something is put on hold, a task or action that requires your immediate focus. Procrastination start with the feeling of guilt, then it surfaces up as you dread to doing it and it eventually catches up on your when you fail to deliver the work on time. Here is the strategy to beat the procrastination you’re facing.
- Tell yourself you will start doing your task in 10 minutes.
- Envision how you complete a task from start to finish. Deal with feeling of overwhelm and anxiousness.
- Shift your focus on just starting doing your task.
Mistake #5. Failing to Manage Distractions
Like it or not, but life is full of unexpected things. Statistically speaking, average person loses up to 2 hours a day to distractions. The common distractions include: urgent meetings, emails, IM chats, phone calls, colleagues failing to deliver the task on time, etc.
- Distractions prevent achieving state of ‘flow’, a satisfying work progress which looks effortless because you are engaged in a task for 100%.
Gaining control over your day, means you minimize distractions and manage interruptions effectively. To keep your focus:
- Turn off IM chat
- Let colleagues know, you will help them at another time.
- Do not be engaged into long phone calls and ask a person if you could call back.
As you can see, dealing with your to-do list every day is highly beneficial and supportive to managing your workflow. Open To Do Checklist, write your to-do list for today, prioritize your tasks, overlook your personal goals, beat procrastination with action and manage your distractions effectively. If you find that this post has been useful to you, let us know as your feedback is valuable for us!