10 Tips on Time Management for Career Success

The importance of time management to the success of your career should not be trivialized. The ability to handle a large workload productively and in a timely fashion can either make or break your career. Here are ten time management strategies to help manage your workload.

Emails should be checked. The ability to quickly process and synthesize information and turn it into actions is an important time management skill to have. Take action on an email as soon as you read it. Easy way to stay on top of your emails is to organize them into file folders according to their importance and urgency.

Set a schedule to open your emails. Checking emails constantly throughout the day can actually be counterproductive by diverting your attention away from your workload. Respond to your emails on a set schedule throughout your workday.

Keep references/contacts organized. Organization is key to almost all time management strategies. You can save yourself time and energy by having your references and contacts organized in an orderly fashion.

Multitasking isn’t always a good skill to have. Multitasking can be a useful skill to have when your attention is needed on multiple projects. But when it hinders your productivity and prevents you from getting anything done, then it becomes poison. Try limiting multitasking if it’s getting in your way of finishing your work.

Prioritize workload according to its importance. Prioritizing your workload, recognizing what needs focus at the right time is another important time management at work skill to have. Projects, documents, campaigns fast approaching its deadline should always be first on your to-d0-list.

Organize your priority list. To help you remember what tasks need to be done, make a priority list toward the end of each workday. There are different ways to create a to-do-list. You can simply write it down or use software programs (i.e. tasktoy) that digest and dissect tasks into manageable chunks.

Take your time. Uninformed decisions will be made if you rush your work. Appropriate time is needed to accurately comprehend all given information. Pace yourself. To be slow is actually a good time management skill to have.

Complex projects should be segmented into manageable workloads. It can get overwhelming when assigned a big, multi-layered project. Dividing a large project into segments in order of importance can easily help you manage the project and finish on time.

Be aware of your best productive time frame. Another arsenal to add to your time management skill is to know when you generate your best work. Each person has a best time: morning, in the afternoon, before lunch, after lunch etc. By being conscious of your peak productive time, you can schedule your most important tasks around this timeframe.

Minimize time consuming skills. Time is a limited resource. You only have eight hours throughout the day to finish all your tasks. Your work, once time is lost, will be compromised. You can never make up for it. Take steps to perfect soft skills to increase time efficiency and productivity rate for career success (i.e. keystroke speed).