Tweet

Effective Time Management: Complete Your Tasks Easily And Have Time For Your Family

Written by: Wendy Hearn

Article Overview: When we think about effective time management we often look at it as a means of better organising our professional lives. However, it is also a valuable tool for maximising and making better use of your leisure time and the time you spend with your family.

Effective Time Management: Complete Your Tasks Easily And Have Time For Your Family

When we think about effective time management we often look at it as a means of better organising our professional lives. However, it is also a valuable tool for maximising and making better use of your leisure time and the time you spend with your family.

There is little doubt that your family is one of the most important things in your life, if not the most important. While your professional life is also very important you do not want to miss your children growing up and the other joys of family life.

But all too often the time we spend with our families is cut short by long working hours and overtime. Also, because of the long hours and pressures of the job, once we do get home we are often too tired, stressed and frustrated to truly enjoy our family time.

However, it does not have to be this way. With a little thought we can identify and eliminate bad habits and outside influences that effect our productivity at work, thereby cutting out those long hours spent working late.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is why you are not getting the work done within normal working hours? What are you doing, or not doing, that is affecting your productivity? This could be any number of things. Do you while away the minutes chatting to co-workers or take regular breaks to check out your Facebook profile. If so, you will need to make some changes.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you remain focused during your working hours. Set out the tasks you need to complete in the day and allocate time slots for them. Be realistic here, do not bite off more than you can chew.

Also look at how outside influences may be slowing you down. Do you have colleagues constantly interrupting your work by asking for advice. Is so, tell them you are not available for this or only available at a certain time in each day. Also do what you can to eliminate other distractions in the office or where you work at home.

Consider also how you can use the colleagues around you or other professionals around you to help you use your time more effectively. If you find that certain tasks are a real drag on your time. Consider delegating these to people who are more suitable for these tasks.

Once you have taken steps to eliminate the things that are wasting time in your working day you can concentrate on what you yourself need to get done. Try structuring your day into 15 or 30 minute segments and write down what you are going to achieve in these time slots. Don't try to pack too much in, but spend this time focusing solely on the task at hand. Also, try to group smaller tasks into segments. For example, instead of checking your emails three or four times in every hour, dedicate one or two 15 minute time slots in each day to completing this task.

It takes a little planning to use our work time effectively but it can be done quite easily. I encourage you to take these few simple steps and you will find you will have much more time to spend with your family.

Related Articles
  How to have a great day
  Time Management Skills For Increased Productivity
  Achieve more Through Time Management
  Time Management Habits that Reward You
  Top Time Management Tips For Time Tight Women

Article Tags: bad habits, co workers, colleagues, distractions, doubt, effective time management, family time, important things, job, leisure time, productivity, professio, professional life, professional lives, time slots, valuable tool



Related Forum Posts
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - We've also expanded the list for Contest and All-Time Leaders. It's great to now see David and Yinka on the All Time list and recognize the contributions they've made to the forums!
Your Intial Mistakes Business - Hi, When I started my business I had made a lot of mistakes initially. These helped me in learning the art of the trade and today when I look back, I feel that these mistakes were quite silly. I had made my learnings then and those learnings have helped me time and again. Some of the mistakes I made were - i. Wrong Time Management ii. Wasting money on glossy Brochures and Business cards iii. Believing what they taught me at school was 100% correct iv. Giving too much when it was not required...... I would like to find out what have been your faltering moments in Business when you had started and what/how did they help you grow. Regards
Books that should be written - [quote:1m0dcpd7]"The Idiots Guide To Sticking With One Thing At A Time and Not Doing Something New All The Time" [/quote:1m0dcpd7] I myself am a 'constructive' procrastinator... I don't know if I'm alone in this. I have about six or seven projects I'm working on at any given time. I get one project almost done... then my interest is piqued by another project and I work on that... I get burnt out and move to another...I know I do this so I have it arranged such that once I get bored or burnt out with one project, I can step right back into project 1 - or 2 or 3, and get that a little bit more done before moving on to something else. As long as you're organized and know where all your reference material/idea sheets are when you're ready to get back to work on each project, it should be fine. I also find that by stepping away from a project - I still work on it in the recesses of my mind so that when I go back to it - it's with some good ideas that I wouldn't have had if I'd continued on with it originally. Maybe I should write a book on how to Procrastinate Constructively... I've actually thought about doing that...because most people procrastinate, don't they...and very few are ever able to stop.
Re: Half of 2011 is gone - It's flying by so quickly! Still have plenty to do that I wanted to have done by now. Time to really step it up!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How to Handle the “I Am Not Interested” Objection

Are You Fulfilled

Fighting the Saw-Tooth Affect

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.