How to Manage Your Time at the Office

Have you noticed you are not accomplishing as much as you would like during the work day? It is essential to find a balance to make your day as efficient and productive as possible. We at HSS have summarized some important steps and tips to keep you on schedule and increase your productivity.

Make Daily Checklists

A checklist of tasks that need to be accomplished for the next work day will allow your day to run more smoothly and avoid missing important meetings/deadlines, etc. Before leaving the office each day make a checklist for the subsequent day. Give yourself point form bullets of items that need to be accomplished. Ranking them by level of importance (e.g. A, B, C) to ensure that the most important items are dealt with first. It may be helpful to put estimated completion times next to each item. This list will ensure that you have a set game plan for the next day’s activities and increase your productivity.

Give Yourself Time for Last Minute Issues

We all know that unexpected phone calls, emergencies, and meetings can often pop up. Scheduling time each day for these unexpected events will help keep you on track. Allocate a couple of hours per day to avoid getting off track and make sure to only tackle these tasks in the set aside time to avoid loss of focus on current tasks.

Work on Your Strategy

Give yourself time for weekly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual planning sessions. Use these sessions to assess the work that was done previously and to set future goals. Use monthly and quarterly sessions for comparing actual business results to budget (/management-consulting-services/), and to review the company’s operations (/operational-improvement/). Working on your strategy will allow you to become more efficient and help keep you on schedule with your goals.

Set Aside Times for Email and Telephone

It’s so easy to lose focus by sending emails and making telephone calls to clients and colleagues. Taking a break from the assigned tasks, may force you to lose focus and to be less productive. At the end of each hour set aside 10-15 minutes to respond to emails and return phone calls or try not checking emails for the first 90 minutes of your work day. This will ensure that you don’t break your focus when working on a task.

Use Your Lunch Hour to Eat Lunch, Socialize, and Build Relationships

So many of us sit at our desks and eat our lunches each day. Try taking your lunch to the lunchroom and enjoy the conversations with other people. Doing something like this will give your mind a break and will recharge yourself for the second half of the day. Perhaps use this time to meet up with customers/clients and build on key relationships.

If you also need to increase the financial effectiveness and efficiency of your business, contact Hogg, Shain & Schek today and begin to build a more efficient business tomorrow.