When it Really CAN Wait: How to Manage Your Time at Work

Since my job is in digital marketing, it’s probably no surprise to hear that I get about 100 emails each day. Granted, only about 40 percent of those are legitimate (non-spam), but it’s still a lot. Add that in with inter-office messaging, verbal conversation, meetings, and phone calls, and it’s hard to actually get work done some days!  

But effective time management is possible, and I want to share some tricks I’ve learned for how to manage your time at work.

Prioritize. Some things are more timely and important to do before others – you can’t possibly do everything right away, and you shouldn’t. Every morning, I look at my task list and organize each item based on priority: Critical items like submitting payroll and drafting an important holiday promotion email campaign for a client take precedence, followed by the daily/weekly tasks that I know require more of my time and energy (I need to use my fresh morning energy), and leave the more natural or low-focus items for the end of the day. 

Focus.  I’ve mentioned this several times before, but it has become such an important part of my workflow that I have to emphasize it again… Sometimes you just have to turn off your email. When I especially need to focus, I also turn off our inter-office messaging tool, tell Molly (our Admin/Receptionist) to take messages on any calls, and put on my headphones to listen to classical music. As a writer, it muddles the flow of words to listen to music with words.

Procrastinate. This ‘P’ word is usually negative, and something you shouldn’t do. However, when it comes to an effective way to manage your time at work, it is a good thing! If I have a very busy day, and receive an email that isn’t high priority (or the task/request isn’t timely), I flag it in my inbox and put it off to deal with later.

These three methods have really helped me to manage my work time! What methods do you use?

Featured photo source: Pixabay.com

1 comment

  1. These are great tips. I have always used a task list at work and find that prioritizing the important tasks really keeps me focused. I also work on a single task at a time. I’m actually not allowed to turn off email, but if I could I certainly would. Because as you mentioned, it’s a big stress factor having to constantly stop and respond to mail.

    Thanks,
    Laura Beth

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