Less Stress and More Productivity – Five Tips for Time Management

Know Who Influences Your Time

No matter what kind of role or company you work in, there are always others who influence your working time and how you use it. Your supervisor and decision-makers above them, your team members, and other colleagues significantly affect your time usage by, for example, asking for your help, involving you in projects, and inviting you to meetings. Suddenly, you might notice that your calendar is drawn up by others and that tasks "that don't take long" actually carve out a major portion of your available time. Your days are spent moving from one meeting to another and clearing your email without having time to do your actual work.

Now is a good moment to stop and think about what is in your core area of responsibility and what is not. Before you accept more tasks, talk with your supervisor. You can also ask your colleagues to discuss the matter with your supervisor first. Take responsibility for your own calendar: ask for support in prioritization, plan your time usage by identifying time thieves, and focus on your most important tasks.

Prioritization and Project Creep

The biggest time thieves are constantly changing priorities and projects that swell larger than their original purpose. By keeping your gaze firmly on priorities and actively monitoring where all the time goes, you can avoid the worst stress and waste of time. A well-planned project should have clear goals, and concrete steps must be drawn up to achieve them, making the prioritization of tasks easier. It is a natural part of projects to have various sizes of pitfalls and setbacks, but with a good plan, these are usually resolved within the project framework.

Sometimes projects also expand unnoticed as the level of ambition grows. This, of course, means that less time is left for other, perhaps even more important things. When you divide your time between different tasks, ask yourself: does doing this task help achieve my goal, and if so, how? If you cannot answer the question quickly and concisely, it is likely that your time would be better spent in another way.

Avoid Stumbling into Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law is one of the peculiarities of working life that, unfortunately, often comes true. The law was first written about by historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955. According to the law, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." For example, if we say that mowing the lawn takes two hours, it takes two hours. Parkinson argued that a job takes exactly as much time as we allocate for it.

How many times have you started a job and thought: “This is quickly done. Before I start, I’ll first have a cup of coffee and answer these emails.” In the end, you find yourself having to do the work in a rush as the deadline threateningly approaches. The situation is a typical example of Parkinson’s Law in action.

Identify and remove from your to-do list those small tasks that cause distractions, which might be nice to do but do not move the project forward. When you do things immediately and cut distractions from your mind, you curb stress, are more productive, and have more time left for other tasks. At the heart of Parkinson’s Law is a simple truth: almost all tasks are worth doing as quickly as possible without giving power to distractions. When we succeed in this, our daily life is more stress-free and we get more done.

Avoid “Too Much” of Everything

One way to keep yourself on the right track and keep energy levels high is to ensure that you never do “too much” of anything, whether it’s meetings, administrative tasks, or planning. If you organize four consecutive meetings on four different topics or do eight hours of nothing but administrative tasks, your productivity will surely decline that day.

When you receive a meeting invitation or a request to perform a task, check your calendar to see what else you have on your program that day. Do you have enough time to prepare? Do you already have similar tasks in your calendar that drain your resources on that same day? If so, it might be better to suggest another time when you are fresher and can focus better. As mentioned, one cannot always decide oneself how every minute of the day is spent, but everyone should, within the limits of possibility, try to find a balance that suits them.

Arrange Time for Yourself

People have different daily rhythms and most productive moments – some are most efficient first thing in the morning, others want to sleep late and prefer to work in the evening. Additionally, we must take care of our stamina and well-being through, among other things, sufficient rest and exercise. Record as many things as possible in your calendar as accurately as possible. For example, if you enjoy exercising early in the morning or want to go for a walk at lunchtime, mark them in your calendar and stick to them. Also reserve time in your calendar for different work tasks – do not forget administrative tasks, ad hoc tasks, or moments of creative thinking.

In working life, one must of course be flexible, but maintaining the balance between work and the rest of life is talked about for a reason. When all areas are in balance, we get the most out of our time both at the workplace and outside of it. We spend on average a third of our lives working, a third sleeping, and the rest on other things that make life worth living. When we find a balance between these three, we have the stamina to do our work better and are satisfied with our lives also outside of work.