Welcome to part two of this three-part blog series for time management! This blog will offer tips on how to improve your organizational skills, so take notes!
- Time Your Tasks: This is for my people who consistently underestimate how long things will take. A common struggle I’ve seen (and relate to) is getting ready in the morning to get to work on time. Let’s say you live 15 minutes away, so you wake up an hour before you have to be there. This gives you 45 minutes max to get ready, but really, you need a full hour of time to get ready. This could lead to chronic lateness, potentially forgetting to brush your teeth, and at the very least, stressful mornings. By timing your tasks, you can have a clarified understanding of how much time you need to allot for your day-to-day tasks.
- Handling Task Paralysis: Once you’ve timed your tasks, you can then break them up into subparts to make them seem less intimidating (I.e. For laundry: Gathering up clothes, separating them, washing/drying, and putting them away can all be approached as separate tasks, doing a little bit at a time).
- Prioritize Appropriately: A tool called the Eisenhower Matrix recommends going from tasks that are urgent and important, to those that are important but not urgent, to urgent but not important, and then anything else you have left to do. It has also been found that starting with the hardest tasks is best to ensure you approach them with a fresh mind.
- Write Stuff Down: Use a physical planner, google calendar, to-do list, or any place that works for you to write down what you have to do and when you have to do it by. Our brains are not meant to remember all these little details, so organizational tools are great for taking that stress off of ourselves. Plus, crossing items off a list can give you a nice little dopamine hit.
- For extra motivation: Even if something doesn’t have a deadline, if it’s important to you, give yourself a personal due date so it gets done.
Click here for part three, avoiding burnout!
